Structural Analysis of Pension Disclosures Under SFAS 87 and Their Relation to Share Prices

When pricing common shares investors do not assign the same earnings multiple  to all components of pension costs. And these multiples differ from the multiple assigned to earnings before pension expense, In particular, both return on plan assets and the interest cost components ten to be assigned higher multipliers than earnings before pension expense. Moreover, the market appears to assign a multiple of zero to the amortizations of the transition asset. Earnings analysis obviously constitutes more that just the “bottom line”; careful analysis of earnings components and of the relative importance assigned to those components is also involved.