What Drives Target Price Forecasts and Their Investment Value?
分解分析师的目标价格预测为盈利预测和市盈率预测两部分，发现两者共同驱动目标价格修正，且基于目标价格隐含预期收益的投资组合能获得显著超额收益，表明分析师在短期盈利和长期增长前景评估上均有信息价值。
Abstract This paper examines the informativeness of analysts’ target price forecasts by relating the investment value of target prices to their primary drivers. Decomposing target price forecasts into near‐term earnings forecasts and price‐to‐earnings ratio forecasts, we show that target price revisions reflect information from both components. In addition, we also find that the relative importance of each component in target price revisions is related to firm characteristics. A portfolio based on target price implied expected returns delivers significant abnormal returns. More importantly, we find that the abnormal returns are associated with both earnings and price‐to‐earnings forecasts, which suggests that the informativeness of target price forecasts comes not only from analysts’ ability to forecast short‐term earnings but also from their ability to assess risk and long‐term growth prospect implied in price‐to‐earnings forecasts.