半導體產業致股東報告書相似度之文字探勘分析

Abstract

本研究旨在透過文本相似度分析，探討公司在面臨重大經濟變化及其研發支出增加時，與致股東報告書相似度之間的關聯性。本文以2011-2020年台灣半導體產業上市櫃公司之致股東報告書為研究樣本，採用cosine similarity (餘弦相似度) 衡量致股東報告書之相似度，以進一步檢驗當企業適逢重大經濟變化時，公司管理層是否藉由致股東報告書文本內容之調整，及時地向報表使用者傳遞更為攸關之訊息。 實證結果顯示，當公司逢資產增加三分之一以上之重大經濟變化及研發支出占比較高時，當年度致股東報告書之文本內容，相較於前一年度致股東報告書，其文本內容相似度較為低。本文依循Brown and Tucker (2011) 的研究，其研究結果為相對於經濟變化較小的公司，經濟變化較大的公司會修改較多管理階層討論與分析 (MD&A)。本文與其研究結果不一致，推測可能係因台灣和美國之企業文化差異，導致致股東報告書及MD&A之表達方式及內容有異。

The purpose of this study is to use text similarity analysis to investigate the relationship between the similarity of reports to shareholders when firms face significant economic changes and an increase in R&D expenditure. This paper employs cosine similarity to measure the similarity of reports to shareholders of listed firms in Taiwan's semiconductor industry from 2011 to 2020, and it also investigates whether managers provide more relevant information to report users by adjusting the text of reports to shareholders when the firms experience significant economic changes. The empirical results show that when firms encounter total assets increase by at least one-third from the previous year and have higher R&D expenditures, the text content of the current year's reports to shareholders is less similar than that of the previous year's reports to shareholder. This article follows a study by Brown and Tucker (2011), whose findings indicate that firms with larger economic changes modify the MD&A more than those with smaller economic changes. The finding in this study is different from that in Brown and Tucker (2011), suggesting that the corporate cultural differences between Taiwan and the United States may result in the differences in the way and the content provided by reports to shareholders and MD&A.