국제회계기준도입 이후 기업의 영업이익 공시행태에 관한 연구

The International Financial Reporting Standards(K-IFRS) have been applied to all listed companies in Korea since 2011. Under the K-IFRS, operating income should be reported separately; however, there is no specific guidelines on how this operating income should be reported. For this reason, each companies used their own methods to report their operating income. This study is performed to see why companies use different methods in reporting their operating income. This study employs data from listed companies only in the year 2011, and finds that operating income is typically defined in three major types. Under the first type(TYPE 1), operating income is defined by subtracting finance income/costs from net income. Under the second type(TYPE 2), operating income is deducting operating costs from gross profits. In fact, this method had been used in the old Korean accounting standard. Under the third type(TYPE 3), operating income is defined by subtracting additionally other gains/losses from the TYPE 1 operating income. As a matter of fact, the TYPE 1 is better in protecting earning manipulation. Also, this TYPE 1 is preferred by Big-4 auditing firms which have close relationship with global accounting firms and have deeper understanding in K-IFRS. The income statements of 1,599 listed firms are examined, and the results shows : 73 percent firms use TYPE 1 method, 13 percent use TYPE 2 method, and 14 percent use TYPE 3 method. Firms with lower ROE in KOSDAQ prefer TYPE 3. 85 percent firms using TYPE 2 in KOSDAQ are audited by non Big4 audit firms. Regardless reporting types, there are much more companies whose reported operating income is larger that the operating income calculated under other types. Therefore, if these companies used other methods, operating income would quite often turn to operating losses. In summary, many companies tend to use a type which results in the best possible operating income.