The Relationship Between Firm Performance and Timing of Financial Reporting in the Listed Companies in Tehran Stock Exchange

The timing of an annual report announcement is a disclosure decision that managers must make. The users recognize timeliness as an important characteristic of usefulness of accounting information. In this research, we investigate relationship between a set of explanatory variables (such as returns on equity, changs of stock return, financial risk and size) and timing of annual financial reporting. we have used the financial data of 88 firms listed at Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), that have analyzed for during 2004 to 2010 by using of the Panel Data System and Ordinary Least Square Regressions (OLS) Model. The results of regression show that timeliness in reporting by TSE listed companies is influenced by their profitability. We find that returns on equity and changes in stock returns are positively associated with the annual financial reports earlier and financial risk and changes in financial risk are negatively associated with the annual financial reports earlier. In addition, the results indicate that the timing of annual report releases is significantly affected by company size.