Company visits and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we observe that firms more visited by analysts or institutional investors exhibit lower future stock price crash risk. This effect is more pronounced for firms facing more incentives for or fewer constraints on hiding bad news. Greater mitigation of crash risk occurs if more firm-specific information is discovered during such visits and if visits are conducted by analysts instead of institutional investors. The impact of company visits is observed mostly in the first half of the subsequent year. These findings suggest that company visits mitigate crash risk by discovering and disseminating firm-specific information.