We question previous evidence that managers mislead investors into selling their stock for artificially lowered prices by releasing overly negative earnings forecasts before stock repurchases. We rely on forecast errors (forecast minus actual earnings) and show that these are insignificantly different between repurchase and matching firms. Our tests are powerful at detecting small differences and yet, across multiple subsamples, we find no statistical difference in forecast errors of repurchase and matching firms. Prior evidence of managerial misleading relied on the negative stock market reaction to management forecasts. We show that this negative reaction is observed only in the subsample where board authorization of repurchase follows management forecast. When board authorization precedes forecast, market reaction to management forecasts for repurchase firms is somewhat higher than that for matching firms. Our evidence suggests that managers are not misleading but exploiting low market prices to the advantage of their long-term shareholders.

中文翻译：

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经理们在股票回购之前是否提供了误导性的盈利预测？

我们质疑先前的证据，即管理者通过在股票回购前发布过度负面的盈利预测来误导投资者以人为降低的价格出售股票。我们依赖预测误差（预测减去实际收益）并表明这些在回购公司和匹配公司之间没有显着差异。我们的测试在检测微小差异方面非常强大，但是，在多个子样本中，我们发现回购和匹配公司的预测误差没有统计差异。管理层误导的先前证据依赖于股市对管理层预测的负面反应。我们表明，这种负面反应仅在董事会授权回购遵循管理层预测的子样本中观察到。当董事会授权先于预测时，市场对回购公司管理层预测的反应略高于匹配公司。我们的证据表明，管理者并没有误导，而是利用低市场价格为他们的长期股东谋取利益。