Continuity risks

This paper aims to demonstrate whether there is information asymmetry between the independent auditors' report and the management report/explanatory notes, in relation to the auditor's mention of the existence of risk of the company's going concern. This research is characterized as qualitative, supported by quantitative, exploratory, documentary, and bibliographic analysis. Data collection was carried out via the Internet on the companies' webpages and on Brasil Bolsa e Balcão (B3), with a delimited sample of companies that mentioned the operational continuity in the audit report for the years ended in 2019, 2020, and 2021, constituting a sample of 41 companies. Discourse analysis and descriptive statistics were used to obtain the results. Supported by the agency theory, especially in the aspect of asymmetry of information, the reports of the companies examined were compared, through which it was noticed that in the report of the independent auditors, the language is clear and objective, even pointing out the reason for the mention of continuity risk. However, in the management reports/explanatory notes, there are few companies that address this mention of the continuity risk, and most of the companies analyzed only make arguments that would justify the difficulties these companies are experiencing. To give greater robustness to the understanding that there is information asymmetry, this study used as an indicator of asymmetry, the t-test (average) of the differences between the returns of the assets paired with the return of the market index (IBOV), between the date of publication of the financial statements and the immediately preceding date. It is concluded that in the discourse analysis, the mention of the continuity risk indicates the existence of information asymmetry, which can mislead readers/investors in the interpretation of the Financial Statements of these companies, however when comparing stock returns with market returns, this asymmetry was not confirmed with the t-test.