No news is bad news: Market reaction to reasons given for late filing of Form 10-K

We examine the relation between reasons provided by management for late filing of Form 10-K and the market reaction to news of the late filing. We find negative abnormal returns for firms providing inadequate or boilerplate reasons for late filing (no attribution), and positive abnormal returns for firms that provide apparently legitimate reasons for late filing (attributions). Regression analyses show a positive relation between attributions and two-day CARs, after controlling for the type of earnings news in the notification of late filing found in Form 12b-25 (positive or negative news).