The paper examines whether firms are more likely to meet or beat analysts' expectations (MBE) when there are more rivals with non-negative earnings surprises. First, we find that after controlling for rival firms earnings information for the period, firms are more likely to meet analysts'...

Prior studies recognize that information transfers associated with a firm's earnings announcement occur due to shifts in industry's competition balance. In this paper, we examine whether market assigns a lower reward (greater penalty) to a firm meeting (missing) earnings expectations (therefore...