dc.description.abstract | Given the importance of income as a financial performance indicator of the companies, and the questions about the quality of this information, this study aimed to classify the Earnings Quality of listed companies in the capital market in Brazil through a quality index of profits (IQL). The sample was composed of corporations publicly traded, listed on the BM&FBovespa, that negotiated actions between the years 2003 to 2012. The database was extracted from Economática® software and a total of 1746 observations were obtained. Were presented the results of the models the persistence of Dechow and Schrand (2004), conservatism Ball and Shivakumar (2005) and earnings management of Kang and Sivaramakrishnan (1995) . The results obtained in these models allowed the preparation of the Profit Quality Index (IQL), by applying the principal component analysis (PCA). The analysis provided identify Elekeiroz companies, Ambev, BR Energy, Tegma and Tecnisa as companies with higher scores IQL of the entire sample. In relation to the market segment, the highlights were the civil construction sector, with 6 companies among the Top 30 largest IQL's. The lowest level of quality of earnings was to Eletrobras company that ranked last in the IQL Ranking. Regarding the worst rates by market segment, the highlight was the textile sector, with 6 companies among the Top 30 smaller IQL's. Noteworthy that the electricity sector appeared significantly both in the segment with better rates of IQL, but also in lower rates of IQL. Thus, it is suggested specific study in order to investigate the influence of the quality of profits in highly regulated industries, such as, eg the electricity sector. | en |