Views and perceptions of financial analysts during the global COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

We conduct a survey with financial analysts to shed light on the question of how they derived their firm evaluations during the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides insights into the ‘black-box’ of financial analysts’ assessments across various salient forecast determinants. We compare the results with responses from the investor relations (IR) departments of the firms covered by the analysts in our study and point out similarities and differences in the respective assessments. Finally, we conduct in-depth interviews with analysts to further enrich and discuss our qualitative findings. One main takeaway of our study is that analysts expect that the pandemic will accelerate the inclusion of sustainability information in company evaluations. Yet, they also agree that financial factors were of predominant concern for their forecasts at the onset of the pandemic. Our results contribute to the inconclusive literature on the financial materiality of Corporate Social Responsibility during this recent crisis period.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• financial analysts
• CSR
• investor relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We do not require that all analysts answer each question. Only 178 analysts answer all our questions.

2 The Eikon database presumably includes outdated analyst contact information, such that the true response rate is likely substantially higher. However, there is no easy way to identify active and updated contact information in the database.