Equity valuation with heterogeneous beliefs

Abstract

Residual income model in equity valuation has emerged as a useful reference for investment decisions on account of its theoretical foundations for analytical accounting research and also the basis of modelling for empirical study on value relevance. However, since investors have disagreement on firm’s future earnings, it may have an effect on firm’s evaluation and hence affect stock price. The paper extends the residual income model by incorporating investors’ heterogeneous beliefs on the persistence of residual income, and then tests the theoretical findings through numerical simulation. The model implies that the relation between stock price and heterogeneous beliefs depends on the sign of residual income, and the impact of informed traders on stock price relies on the interaction effect of heterogeneous beliefs and residual income. The numerical simulation results prove that under the circumstance of positive heterogeneous beliefs, if residual income is also positive, stock price has a positive relation with heterogeneous beliefs and amount of informed investor; while if residual income is negative, stock price has a negative relation with heterogeneous beliefs and informed trading. The findings of the paper provide some useful theoretical implications on the effect of heterogeneous beliefs on equity valuation via residual income framework. Research limitations mainly exist in the strict theoretical assumptions, which can be loosen in further researches to make the model closer to real market.