Theory suggests that balance sheet information such as total assets, total equity, or total liabilities complements earnings information in helping investors assess a firm’s profitability and estimate earnings growth. The voluntary disclosure of balance sheet information at earnings announcement could help investors gather and process this information at a lower cost. We therefore predict that voluntary balance sheet disclosure at the time of an earnings announcement helps investors promptly understand the implication of current earnings news for future earnings and subsequently reduces post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD). Consistent with these predictions, our results show that when firms provide voluntary balance sheet disclosures, the earnings response coefficient in the event window is significantly higher and the corresponding PEAD is significantly lower. We further find that the impact of voluntary balance sheet disclosure on PEAD is more pronounced when the magnitude of balance sheet value surprise is larger, when balance sheet value is more informative about future earnings, when earnings uncertainty is higher, or when information cost is higher, consistent with our conjectures that helping investors to better understand future earnings performance and lowering information costs are key mechanisms underlying the effect of voluntary balance sheet disclosure on PEAD.

理论认为，资产负债表信息（例如总资产，总股本或总负债）可以补充收益信息，从而帮助投资者评估公司的盈利能力并估计收益增长。盈余公告中自愿披露资产负债表信息可以帮助投资者以较低的成本收集和处理该信息。因此，我们预测，在发布盈余时自愿披露资产负债表有助于投资者迅速了解当前盈余新闻对未来盈余的影响，并随后减少盈余公告后的变动（PEAD）。与这些预测一致，我们的结果表明，当公司提供自愿性资产负债表披露时，事件窗口中的收入响应系数显着较高，而相应的PEAD显着较低。我们进一步发现，当资产负债表价值突增幅度更大，资产负债表价值对未来收益更具信息性，收益不确定性较高或信息成本较高时，自愿资产负债表披露对PEAD的影响更加明显。 ，这与我们的推测一致，即帮助投资者更好地了解未来收益表现和降低信息成本是自愿性资产负债表披露对PEAD产生影响的关键机制。