Dívida e a qualidade dos lucros

Abstract

The objective of this case study was to analyze if the level of the debt in the companies listed on BM & FBOVESPA affects the earnings quality. To support this case, prior studies suggest that the earnings quality can be verified by discretionary accruals measure. For that, the relation between debt and earnings quality was investigated, analyzing 198 companies in the period from 2009 to 2015, using as reference the tests made in the Ghosh and Moon (2010) survey. The method used to verify the relation between debt and earnings quality is based on four statistical models to estimate discretionary accruals. In this way, residuals of the accruals calculated according to the models proposed by Jones (1991), Dechow et al. (1995), Dechow and Dichev (2002) and McNichols (2002) and related to debt. The four tests performed to relate the residuals of the accruals to debt demonstrate a nonlinear relation of debt to the earnings quality in the Brazilian context. Such a result allows one to assume that debt can have a positive influence on the earnings quality, since management can use its discretion and provide high quality information on the future prospects of companies to reduce financing costs. The results suggest that accruals improve at an approximate level of up to 54% of the Debt / Total Assets ratio. In a scenario where debt is high, it is possible to observe the negative influence on the earnings quality, since the managers use the accruals to manage the result and avoiding breaches of the debt contract.