To share or not to share? Financial analysts’ questioning in conference calls

We study whether superior financial analysts strategically reveal less information in earnings conference calls. To the extent that analysts’ relative information advantages translate into desirable professional outcomes, we expect superior analysts to be mindful of safeguarding their information advantages when interacting with peers. Consistent with expectations, we find that superior analysts (measured as analysts with higher ex-ante forecast accuracy) share relatively less information (measured as the cosine modification between analysts’ questions and the management presentation) in conference calls. Moreover, our findings imply that analysts’ information sharing increases in ex-ante information uncertainty and decreases in analysts’ competition. Finally, we show that superior analysts benefit marginally less from sharing information. Collectively, our results shed light on the role of analysts as information intermediaries in shaping firms’ information environments.