"Market watchers have long griped about companies
that try to bury their bad news by releasing it late on a Friday afternoon. Earnings
shortfalls, product recalls, outlandish severance deals—these things always
seem to hit the wires just as we’re kicking off our pumps and wingtips for the
weekend. The website Footnoted even runs a regular feature called the Friday Night
Dump, in which it combs through end-of-the-week SEC FILINGS
for dirty laundry.
But does this old PR
trick even work in a world of 24/7 news services and social media? Not when it
comes to earnings announcements, according to a working paper by Stanford
Graduate School of Business accounting professor Ed deHaan and colleagues. In
fact, by one measure, Friday filings might even get a little extra
scrutiny—presumably the opposite of what those companies were hoping for."
