The Nexus of Corporate Disclosure and Investors’ Information Needs: An Analysis Using Topic Modeling

ABSTRACT This paper identifies thematic topics that individual and institutional investors discuss about firms and investigates whether, and for which type of investors, companies incorporate in their disclosures the investors’ information needs. We use latent Dirichlet allocation to identify firm‐related topics discussed by investors and compare these topics with the content of subsequent firm disclosures. We find a positive association between the proportion of text dedicated to several firm‐related topics discussed by investors and the proportion of text on the same topics in firms’ subsequent MD&A disclosures. We also find that firms integrate much more in their disclosures institutional investors’ information needs, compared with those of individual investors. For a subset of topics, stronger associations occur for more profitable and high‐growth firms, and for firms experiencing more negative sentiment from institutional investors, subject to lower proprietary costs, and utilizing alternative communication channels. Overall, our findings extend the research on the link between individual and institutional investors’ request for information and the content of corporate disclosure.