Intangible Value Intensity and Stock Price Crash Risk

According to previous studies, firms with a high proportion of intangible assets have high information asymmetry, and firms with high information asymmetry have shown a higher stock price crash risk. Therefore, we suggest that firms with intangible factors that cannot be measured and are not reported in the financial statements are associated with high stock price crash risk. This study investigates the effect of intangible value intensity on the stock price crash risk. In this study, the firm performance that exceeds tangible assets' productivity has been regarded as being created by intangible factors (after here, intangible value). The intangible value of a firm is measured indirectly. We find that the intangible value intensities are significantly associated with the stock price crash risk. These results mean that the higher intangible values that are not recognized in the financial statements are higher the stock price crash risk. Next, we examine how accounting quality affects the relationship between intangible value intensity and stock price crash risk. The finding shows that the higher firms' accounting quality are the lower firms’ stock price crash risk due to intangible value. In addition, the effect of intangible value intensity on stock price crash is highly found among firms in the high intangible expenditures group. These results imply that intangible values are associated with the performance of firms and valuation uncertainty. Therefore, we show that intangible factors at non-financial statements increase the stock price crash risk. Our findings provide implication that the managers of firms with high intangible value should reduce the information asymmetry by increasing the aggressive disclosure and accounting quality. This study is significant in that it not only measures the total intangible value of a company, but also classifies three intangible value intensities.