Customer Concentration And Analyst Earnings Forecast Accuracy

China has entered a critical period of economic transformation.The success of economic transformation depends on whether resources are allocated efficiently.Securities analysts,as information mediators in capital markets,play an active role in guiding investors to rationally invest and improve the efficiency of resource allocation in capital markets.Securities analysts can provide investment advice to investors by searching and interpreting the information of listed companies,alleviating the information asymmetry between listed companies and investors,guiding investors to pay attention to the intrinsic value of listed companies' stocks,and alleviating capital markets noise,thereby improving the efficiency of resource allocation in the capital market.The role of securities analysts in improving the efficiency of resource allocation in capital markets is largely rely on the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts.Existing research on the factors affecting the accuracy of analyst earnings forecasts is less likely to be viewed from the perspective of corporate stakeholders-major customers.At the same time,with the rise of supply chain management theory,more and more companies are trying to strengthen their own supply chain management and strengthen cooperation with upstream and downstream customers to enhance their competitiveness.However,the relationship between business and customer has multiple effects in corporate governance.Therefore,this paper mainly studies the influence of customer concentration on analysts'earnings forecast,explores the path of customer concentration affecting analysts' earnings forecast,and further studies the relationship between customer concentration and analyst's earnings forecast accuracy in different situationsThis paper takes the 2008-2017 A-share listed companies as samples,and studies the impact of customer concentration on analysts' earnings forecasts from the two aspects of corporate performance fluctuation and accounting information quality,and further considers the influence of internal and external characteristics of enterprises.The study found that:(1)customer concentration significantly positively affects analysts' earnings forecast bias,that is,the higher the customer concentration,the lower the accuracy of the analyst's earnings forecast;(2)the impact path shows that:the higher the customer concentration The higher the volatility of the company's performance,the greater the operational risk,the lower the accuracy of the analyst's forecast;the higher the customer concentration,the lower the information quality of the company,and the lower the accuracy of the analyst's forecast.The increase in the risk of performance fluctuations caused by customer concentration and the decline in information quality are important mediators for reducing the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts.After a series of robustness tests,the above results are still valid;(3)Further research shows that in the case of low environmental uncertainty,the risk effect of customer concentration is not significant,only with the high environmental uncertainty,customer concentration will negatively affecting analysts'earnings forecasts;when the company's bargaining power is higher,the risk effect of customer concentration will be greatly weakened,and the risk of customer concentration on analysts' earnings forecasts will be greatly reduced.The effect is only significant in groups with weak bargaining power;the stability of customer relationships and the existence of quality customers will reduce the risk effect of customer concentration on analysts' earnings forecasts,only in groups with unstable customer relationships and low customer quality.This paper studies the impact of customer concentration on the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts from the perspective of corporate stakeholders,and to a certain extent enriches the research literature related to the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts,and at the same time interprets customer concentration for investors.