Does the market reward integrated report quality?

Despite the increasing interest in Integrated Reporting, it is not yet clear what actual value the market assigns to it. Our research aims to establish whether a high quality Integrated Report (IR) influences firm market value. Specifically, we investigate whether shareholders take into account the good quality disclosure provided by IR in their investment assessments and reward the outstanding firms. We proxy high quality disclosure by the awards assigned to IRs published by a sample of South African listed companies. Using event study methodology, we find that investors appreciate the quality of financial and non-financial disclosure provided by IRs. Our analysis shows that the stock market reacts positively to award announcements, the value attributed by shareholders to the quality of IR is persistent, grows over time and is particularly high in non-financial companies. This evidence should encourage managers to invest in improving IR disclosure quality.