支持抑或掠夺?客户盈余信息与供应商股价崩盘风险

Support or Plunder: Customer's Earnings and Supplier's Stock Price Crash Risk

高盈余的客户更有动机支持供应商企业从而减少企业股价崩盘风险,也更有能力掠夺供应商企业从而增加企业股价崩盘风险。本文以1566组企业及其客户均为上市公司的"企业-年度-客户"三维数据为对象的研究表明:客户盈余与供应商企业股价崩盘风险显著负相关,这一结论在经过系列稳健性检验后依然成立,说明高盈余的客户对供应商企业股价崩盘风险总体上具有积极的"支持效应"。影响路径分析发现:在客户排名靠前、客户销售占比较高组,也即客户具有更高谈判力时,高盈余客户对供应商企业股价崩盘风险发挥"支持效应";但在客户存货周转率较低、应付账款周转率较低组,也即客户更可能压榨供应商企业时,并未发现高盈余客户对股价崩盘风险具有"掠夺效应"的明显证据。进一步分析表明:当供应商企业信息透明度较高,客户和供应商关系较稳定,以及客户或供应商盈余波动性较小时,高盈余客户对供应商企业股价崩盘风险的"支持效应"更强。本文研究有利于丰富股价崩盘风险与客户信息经济后果相关文献,有助于理解客户在供应链中扮演的角色,对监管者、投资者、供应商和客户具有重要参考价值。

The agency behavior of managers hiding bad news in the context of information asymmetry is an important reason for the stock price crash.Existing literatures shows that major shareholders,creditors,institutional investors,analysts,government,media,regional religious atmosphere and other stakeholders can increase or decrease the information transparency to alleviate or exacerbate the agency conflicts,thus affect the firm s stock price crash risk.However,due to lack of the basic data,as an important stakeholder,how could a firm s customer affect its stock price crash risk is ignored.Moreover,there is no literature focus on the relationship between a customer s earnings and its supplier firms stock price crash risk.Relative literatures indicate that customer and customer relative information can provide incremental information for investors to understand the value of its supplier firm,the organization capital intangible assets can be recognition and reflected in the market value.A major customer can affect its suppplier s operating activities,cost structure and the profitability.What s more,a major customer needs its supplier to provide robust accounting reports to guard against supplier s management opportunism.Compared with no important customers,suppliers with important customers tend to disclose more good news and strategically choose to hide bad news.Therefore,a major customer may influence the information quality and information behavior of its supplier,thus may influence its supplier s stock price crash risk.The influence of a customer s earnings on its supplier firms stock price crash risk has two possibilities:a customer may either support or plunder its supplier firm.On the one hand,if a customer and its supplier firm collaborative development with each other,it may bring some benefit to its supplier firm,the customer can lower its supplier firm s stock price crash risk.We named it as supporting effect.On the other hand,if a customer continuously extruding its supplier firm s profit space,it may bring some risk to its supplier firm,the customer may raise its supplier firm s stock price crash risk.We named it as plundering effect.With the increase of the customer s earnings,the customer may have more incentive to support its supplier,thus reduce its supplier firm s stock price crash risk.Howevre,high earings customer also have more ability to plunder its supplier,thus increase its supplier firm s stock price crash risk.Which effect will be happen is an empirical question.Using an hand-collected 1566“Firm-Year-Customer”group databasewhich both the supplier firm and its customer are Chinese listed companies,this paper exam the relationship between the customer s earnings and its supplier s future stock price crash risk.We find thatwith the customer s earnings increasing,its supplier firm s stock price crash risk will obviously decrease.This negative correlation is still significate after a series of robust tests,indicate that high earnings customer support its supplier as a whole.The channel effects analyses show that the negative correlation are more siginificate when the customer s saling proportion is high and the cusomter is rank top,suggesting that customer has supporting effects on its supplier firm when it has a high bargaining power.While the correlations are not positive when the customer s inverntory turnover and accounts receivable is low,suggesting that there is no obvious evidence for the plundering effect.It is noteworthy that the correlations are still negative but not siginificate any more,means that the plundering effect increased as the customer s earnings increasd,or even offset the supporting effect.Further analyses show that when the supplier s information transparency is higher,the relationship between customer and supplier is more stable,and the earnings volatility of the supplier or the customer are less,the negative correlation between a customer s earnings and its supplier firm s stock price crash risk will be more significance.Based on the above conclusions,this paper offers some marginal contributions from three aspect.Firstly,existing literatures on the stock price crash risk do not pay enough attention to the customer,this paper expanded the relative studies.Secondly,differenct from most of the customerrelationship relative literatures,using a hand collected“Firm-Year-Customer”group database,this paper focus on the customer s specific traits,which would enrich the economic consequences of customer relative literatures.Thirdly,thispaperprovides some important inspirations for us to understand the customer s role on the supply chain.