Using sentiment analysis to study the relationship between subjective expression in financial reports and company performance

Abstract

In recent years, with the development and progress of text information research, the disclosure of non-financial and qualitative information has often be found to have an incremental function. Financial reports, including financial statements and other relevant information, provide important insights on an enterprise’s financial status, operating results, and cash flow. Faced with a large number of financial reports, readers often do not know where to start, and as financial statements are prepared based on past transactions, they cannot fully reflect the past, present, and future economic conditions of the company. Information asymmetry and uncertainty make the text mining of financial reports of great significance to enterprise stakeholders. Accordingly, this paper takes financial reports as the research object and builds a research framework on the relationship between subjective expression in financial reports and company performance. Through natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and other text-mining technologies, the paper quantifies the subjective expression in financial reports and introduces intermediaries. Variables, moderating variables, and control variables are used to construct a multiple regression model. The empirical results show that the underlying emotional tendencies in subjective expressions substantially impact on the future development of listed companies. This paper enriches understanding of the multi-dimensional relationship between financial report text and company performance, and provides ideas for further exploring this relationship. It is of great practical significance to help them make rational decisions and ensure the normal operation of the company and the preservation and appreciation of capital.