Do Sustainability Restatements Impair Financial Analysts’ Earnings Forecast Accuracy?

This paper examines empirically the association between sustainability restatements (SRS), that is, restatements in sustainability reports, and analyst forecast accuracy, measured by analysts’ forecast errors for current‐year earnings. We find that SRS are related to greater earnings forecast errors, especially when they are related to environmental or quantitative information (or predominantly to both simultaneously) and to error revisions. In terms of materiality, we find that value material revisions have a greater effect on analysts’ forecasts than do nonvalue material revisions. However, we find only weak evidence that SRS that are related to material information according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board affect analyst estimates. We also show that the effects of SRS are influenced by firms’ use of Global Reporting Initiative reporting standards. Overall, our findings are consistent with SRS impairing the forecast accuracy of financial analysts. However, our results indicate that external assurance on sustainability reports reduces the negative effects of SRS on forecast accuracy.