BANKING ACADEMY OF VIETNAM FACULTY OF FINANCE ---o0o--- GRADUATION THESIS Topic: KEY FACTORS AFFECTING EARNINGS MANAGEMENT THE CASE OF REAL ESTATE LISTED FIRMS IN VIETNAM Student: Mac Minh Phuong Student code: 22A4010423 Class: K22CLCC Supervisor: Dr. Tran Ngoc Mai Hanoi, 2023 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I want to thank the instructors from the Faculty of Finance at the Banking Academy for giving me the chance to study, practice, and acquire the knowledge and skills I needed to complete the thesis. Particularly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Tran Ngoc Mai, who served as my thesis advisor, for her thorough guidance, close supervision, and helpful counsel in assisting me with the completion of my thesis.
My thesis may have imperfections because of my limited knowledge and lack of practical experience, so I'm looking forward to your additional guidance and instruction. Finally, I sincerely wish you good health and ongoing achievement in your career. Best regards Mac Minh Phuong ii PROTESTATION I declare that the thesis is the outcome of the investigation, study, and investigation process carried out under the supervision of Dr. Tran Ngoc Mai.
The research findings in this paper have undergone a careful examination, and the data in the tables and figures have been gathered, statistically analyzed, and calculated by me. All evaluations and findings made by other authors will be referenced in full, along with their sources. I certify that no previous presentation or publication of the complete material has occurred. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 Pages ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. v LIST OF TABLES. vi LIST OF FIGURES. Rationale of the study.
Research objectives and research questions. Research subject and scope of study. 8 Chapter 2: Literature review on factors affecting earnings management. Concept of earnings management.
Definition of earnings management. Purpose of earnings management. Methods of earnings management. Some theories relating to earnings management.
Asymmetric information theory. Models to identify earnings management. Model of Healy (1985). Model of DeAngelo (1986).
Model of Jones (1991). Model of Dechow et al. Model of Kothari et al. Factors affecting earnings management.
Consolidated financial statements. 28 CHAPTER 3:RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Data analysis method. 38 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.
Checking for multicollinearity for pooled OLS model. Checking for the Heteroskedasticity. Check for autocorrelation. 45 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
Recommendations for Stakeholders. Recommendations for real estate listed firms in Vietnam. Implications to the State Agency. Limitations and future research.
64 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Big 4 The four major audit firms including Pricewaterhouse Coopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte Touche & Tohmatsu DA Discretionary accruals Deloitte Deloitte Touche & Tohmatsu EY Ernst & Young Global Limited GDP Gross domestic product KPMG KPMG International Cooperative NDA Non-discretionary accruals PwC Pricewaterhouse Coopers International Limited vi LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Summary of variables in the model ………………………………………………………… 34 Table 4.1: Descriptive statistics for variables included in the model ……………………….8: Summary of research hypotheses and research results …………………………… 51 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Factors affecting earnings management .2: Correlation matrix for variables included in the model ……….5: Autocorrelation test…………………………………………………………………………………… 44 Figure 4.6: Regression results of the equation 1…………………………………………….7: Regression results of the model …………………………………………………………………. 46 1 ABSTRACT In the instance of real estate listed enterprises in Vietnam, this thesis highlights the factors that have an impact on earnings management. The size of the auditor, the size of the consolidated financial statements, financial performance, business size, and financial leverage are five aspects that are looked at. 510 firm-year observations are produced as a consequence of data extraction from the Finnpro platform for 102 listed firms on the Vietnam Stock Exchange between 2018 and 2022.
Regression modeling and the Jones (1991) model are used to process panel data. According to the findings, three variables consolidated financial statements, financial performance, and financial leverage have a positive effect on earnings management, whereas auditor size and business size have no bearing on earnings management. This thesis proposes further information on earnings management and makes some suggestions to those who use financial statements to decide economically on real estate listed corporations. Rationale of the study In recent years, earnings management has gradually become a popular topic of research in Vietnam.
In the current context, the Vietnamese economy is facing many difficulties after the crises and stagnation caused by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses often tend to seek investment capital to supplement resources. However, they are facing many difficulties in accessing and attracting investment capital because the production and business efficiency of enterprises has been heavily affected by the pandemic. Managers often use profit management tricks to make the company's profits more attractive to investors. The management of profit in accounting is the behavior of business managers using estimates in accounting and choosing accounting policies to adjust profits according to the wishes of managers.
The behavior will distort the actual financial position of the enterprise and lead to extremely serious consequences for investors when being deceived about the business performance and growth rate of the enterprise, thereby suffering losses heavily on their investment decisions. And the management of profits will significantly affect the transparency and healthy development of the stock market. According to Schipper (1989), earnings management is a purposeful intervention in the external financial reporting process with the aim of obtaining private benefits. Healy and Wahlen (1999) gave the definition: Profit management occurs when managers use judgment in the financial statements and construct transactions to change the financial statements in order to make the subjects use the information in the financial statements.
The financial statements misinterpret the company's business situation or affect contracts with commitments based on accounting profit targets. Ronen and Yarri (2008) have summarized the above views and proposed 3 groups of earnings management based on the objective of information disclosure, including white profit management group to increase the quality of financial statements, earning management group to improve the quality of financial statements. 3 According to WangJianHui (2009), earnings management is widely used in domestic and foreign enterprises. If this happens, in the long run, it will reduce the quality and reliability of financial statement information.
Accounting information about profits is important information that investors, creditors. use to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of enterprises. Using data from the Vietnamese stock exchange and the Beneish score model to identify earnings management, Nguyen et al. (2020) discovered that the real estate industry had the highest score on the involvement of earnings management.
The study looked into the ownership structure's impact on earnings management in real estate enterprises, likewise employed the Vietnamese market as its empirical foundation. According to their research (Chen et al., 2008; Nguyen et al., 2020), a higher level of state ownership is favorably connected to earnings management. Similar to Matteo and Francesco (2018), they discovered that management and board ownership in the company are inversely connected to earnings management (Nguyen et al. The positive changes have opened up many investment opportunities and increased income, so the investment demand, as well as the demand for buying houses, is increasing.
This leads to the development of real estate enterprises in Vietnam. However, due to the relatively high profits in this field, it has attracted and encouraged businesses to increase their business and expand their operation scale, thereby creating a "virtual fever" for the real estate market. and the phenomenon of "bubble" of real estate appearing is inevitable. Real estate enterprises enable the growth of various ancillary industries, including banking and finance, the interior business, insurance, and the production of more houses and real estate for economic investment.
As a consequence, investors are always drawn to the stocks of real estate companies because they want to take advantage of favorable opportunities to grow their stock market holdings. Investment psychology will advance given that the Vietnamese government has successfully contained the COVID-19 pandemic. Since Vietnam's government 4 policy reforms are seen as being of high quality, stability, and assistance in real estate market becoming more and more sustainable, the real estate sector will continue to draw investors. The management of the profitability of listed real estate businesses in Vietnam is one of the major worries for cautious investors, even though the disease-related anxiety has diminished.
As a goal, motivation, and requirement for the existence and growth of the firm, profit plays a significant role in the production and commercial activities of the enterprise. Profitability must continually be improved to ensure company effectiveness and to show the level of production management capability of the enterprise's production and business management team. A profitable firm demonstrates that it is able to adapt to the workings of the market in terms of market- driven business. Therefore, businesses' main objective is to make a profit.
Business managers can increase profits and draw in investments by managing their earnings. However, there are a variety of elements that have an impact on earning management, with business-related factors being the most visible. With an aim to lessen challenges in the earning management process, each organization must recognize and address those concerns. In this situation, corporate leaders are not the only ones who can benefit from research on how internal issues affect the management of real estate firms listed on the public market.
For investors interested in real estate equities, it also makes sense in this industry. Through the aforementioned analysis, it is critical to investigate the variables and their impact on earnings management at Vietnam's real estate firms, in order to meet the interests of investors and investors while also contributing to a more diverse scientific base concerning the issue of earnings management. Previous studies Saleh et al. (2005) studied the impact of the Board of Directors on the management of profits of 561 companies listed in Malaysia in 2001.
Using the Jones (1991) model, the author obtained the conclusion of each study that the factors having positive impact on profit management are the ratio of return on total assets (ROA), the simultaneous holding of two positions of Chairman of the Board of Directors and the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO); The group of factors that have negative impact on profit management is the size of the company and the ownership ratio of the manager. Alves (2012) studied the relationship between ownership structure and earnings management of 34 listed Portuguese companies on the exchange during 2002-2007. It found that the management of profits of observed firms was affected by the ownership structure. It is the inverse relationship between managers' ownership and shareholders' ownership for earnings management.
Simultaneously, profit management will decrease when the enterprise has high cash flow from business contracts and increase when the political costs, coefficient and number of members in the Board of Directors are larger. The effects of earnings management on growth, leverage, fixed asset sales, profitability, firm size, firm age, industry, audit quality, and independent auditor were also studied by Nico Alexander and Hengky (2017). The study's sample size was 309 data, and the results indicate that only profit has a favorable effect on income management among the nine variables examined. Little is impacted by growth, leverage, fixed asset sales, size, age, audit quality, the independence of the auditor and the industries.
In order to receive bonuses from investors as a result of higher profits, managers in a company will actively participate in earnings management. Nguyen Thi Uyen Phuong (2014) with research on management at profit when companies launch more shares in the market with data of 75 companies not belonging to the financial sector listed in the years from 2010 to 2012. The study concludes that businesses have changes that increase the number of shares. Profits increase before 6 offering more shares in order to attract the attention of investors and large-scale enterprises to them, increasing the degree of profit adjustment.
According to Tran (2014), board independence (61.56%), and financial leverage (8.