EVIDENCE OF MANAGERIAL TIMING: THE CASE OF EXCHANGE LISTINGS

Before an exchange listing, stock performance is exceptionally high. Earlier research reports that post-listing performance is poor. I document that the post-listing performance of most firms that list on either the American Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange differs little from that of similar stocks that do not list. However, listing stocks that experience the highest pre-listing performance underperform their control stocks after listing. This finding supports the hypothesis that managers can time exchange listings around a peak in stock performance.     

Cross-Listing and Operating Performance: Evidence from Exchange-Listed American Depositary Receipts

Abstract:  In this paper we examine the operating performance of non-US firms that enter major US stock exchanges using American Depositary Receipt (ADR) programs. Our dataset consists of 108 capital-raising and non-capital-raising firms from twenty four countries, cross-listed on major US stock exchanges during the period 1994–2004. We provide evidence that capital-raising cross-listed firms experience improvements in their operating performance after the listing, relative to a non-cross-listed matched sample of firms and relative to the pre-listing period, whereas non-capital-raising cross-listed firms out-perform a non-cross-listed matched sample of firms for both the pre-listing and the post-listing periods. These results suggest that the type of ADR program conveys information about changes in the post-listing operating performance. Moreover, both capital-raising and non-capital-raising cross-listed firms have positive abnormal returns due to the cross-listing and these abnormal returns are positively related with the post-listing abnormal changes in operating performance, suggesting that the market anticipates the post-listing abnormal changes in operating performance. Results are robust after adjusting for various firm and country risk characteristics.     

Post-listing underperformance: Is it really bad to move trading locations?

We reexamine the post-listing puzzle by studying the stock performance of 2103 firms that moved from NASDAQ to NYSE or AMEX, or from AMEX to NYSE during 1973–1999. The matched four-factor regressions demonstrate that the listing firms do not underperform. Size-and-book-to-market matched factor regression finds that the “post-listing drift” is confined to the small set of firms moving from NASDAQ to AMEX during 1981–1990, within size deciles 3–6 and book-to-market quintiles 1–3. A further control of the industry effect is able to resolve the remaining abnormal returns. Our results are consistent with the pseudo market timing hypothesis in Schultz, (2003) [Schultz, P., 2003. Pseudo market timing and the long-run underperformance of IPOs. J. Fin. 58, 483–517.].     

The effect of option listing on financing decisions

This paper investigates the effect of option listing on corporate financing decisions. Firms experience a significant drop in leverage, which is driven mainly by an increase in new equity issues. This effect is more prominent in firms with greater information asymmetry and lower percentages of quasi-index and transient investors before listing and those with active options trading after listing. After options are listed, the newly listed firms hold more cash and engage in more acquisitions, which are funded mainly by equity issues. These findings suggest that option listing has a significant impact on financing decisions because of lower information asymmetry and that firms use the post-listing equity to build up financial slack and support major investments, such as acquisitions.     

Valuation effects of international stock exchange listings

A comprehensive data set consisting of 346 U.S. firm stock listings on ten different stock exchanges is examined in order to determine the valuation consequences of listing on a foreign stock exchange. For the sample of U.S. firms listing abroad, abnormal returns in U.S. trading were: (1) positive around the date of acceptance on the foreign exchange; (2) negative on the first trading day; and (3) negative in the post-listing period for firms listing on the Tokyo and Basel exchanges. Tests for the equality of stock return variances between event periods and market model estimation periods failed to reveal a definitive impact.     

Competition and cooperation among exchanges: A theory of cross-listing and endogenous listing standards

We analyze firms’ choice of exchange to list equity and exchanges’ choice of listing standards when insiders have private information about firm value, but outsiders can produce (noisy) information at a cost. Exchanges are populated by two kinds of investors, whose numbers vary across exchanges: sophisticated (low information production cost) investors and ordinary (high–cost) investors. While firms are short-lived, exchanges are long-lived, value-maximizing agents whose listing and disclosure standards evolve over time. The listing standards chosen by exchanges affect their “reputation,” since outsiders can partially infer the rigor of these standards from the post-listing performance of firms. We show that, while exchanges use their listing standards as a tool in competing for listings with other exchanges, this will not necessarily lead to a “race to the bottom” in listing standards. Further, a merger between two exchanges may result in a higher listing standard for the combined exchange relative to that of either of the merging exchanges. We develop several other implications for firms’ listing choices and resulting valuation effects, the impact of competition and co-operation among exchanges on listing standards, and the optimal regulation of exchanges.     

Liquidity and Stock Exchange Listing

This study examines the pattern of stock price behavior for a sample of 71 firms that moved from NASDAQ and NASDAQ/NMS to the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) between 1982 and 1987. The study tests the liquidity gains hypothesis, which states that investors expect liquidity gains for the less liquid over-the-counter stocks but not for their more liquid counterparts after their listing on the AMEX. The results support the hypothesis by showing a significant difference between the two groups of stocks on the day the AMEX announced approval of the listing. Thus, companies with low liquidity are the largest beneficiaries of listing. The evidence provides little support for the anomalous negative pattern of returns during the post-listing period reported in previous studies.     

Why Do Companies List Shares Abroad?: A Survey of the Evidence and Its Managerial Implications

The purpose of this monograph is to survey the academic literature on the economic implications of the corporate decision to list shares on an overseas stock exchange. My focus is on the valuation and liquidity effects of the listing decision, and the impact of listing on the company's global risk exposure and its cost of equity capital. The evidence shows:
(1) share prices reacts favorably to cross-border listings in the first month after listing;
(2) post-listing price performance up to one year is highly variable across companies depending on the home and listing market, its capitalization, capital-raising needs and other company-specific factors;
(3) post-listing trading volume increases on average, and, for many issues, home-market trading volume increases also;
(4) liquidity of trading in shares improves overall, but depends on the increase in total trading volume, the listing location and the scope of foreign ownership restrictions in the home market;
(5) domestic market risk is significantly reduced and is associated with only a small increase in global market risk and foreign exchange risk, which can result in a net reduction in the cost of equity capital of about 126 basis points;
(6) American Depositary Receipts represent an effective vehicle to diversify U.S.-based investment programs globally;
(7) stringent disclosure requirements are the most important impediment to cross-border listings.     

Suppliers' listing status and trade credit provision

We show that public suppliers extend more trade credit than their private counterparts. The impact of stock market listing on accounts receivable is more pronounced among firms that are financially more constrained or more reliant on external finance. Moreover, firms significantly increase their trade credit provision following equity issuances in stock exchanges. These results are consistent with the argument that stock market listing status improves firms' access to external sources of financing, especially equity capital, thus enhancing their ability to offer more trade credit to customers.     

Why firms favour the AIM when they can list on main market?

It is often argued that the popularity of Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in terms of higher number of listings relative to the Main Market (MM) is mainly due to the strict listing requirements in the MM. During the 1995 to 2014 period, 577 out of 1143 AIM listed firms did not qualify for MM listing, but the rest (566) that raised equity in AIM could have joined the MM. This raises the question why firms that meet the heavier regulatory environment of the MM choose the AIM, a lighter regulatory environment. This paper subjects this question to a comprehensive investigation and finds that the market choice is a self-selection decision. The two markets attract companies with different characteristics, and dissimilar post-listing investment and financing priorities. The evidence also shows that smaller and younger companies choose to be listed on the AIM due to lower listing and on-going costs. Heckman Selection models addressing the important question of what would have been the operating performance if AIM companies joined MM indicate that AIM companies would not perform better had they selected to go public in the MM.     

Credit scores and the performance of newly-listed stocks: an exploration of the Chinese A-share market

This study assesses the power of S&P Global Market Intelligence’s CreditModel (CM) scores in explaining the short- and long-run performance of newly-listed Chinese firms. A unique feature of the data arises from such scores being outside the public domain during the study period. Focus on such a period avoids the signalling and self-selection biases that inevitably plague studies delving into the relevance of publicly-announced credit ratings. We find that CM scores exhibit positive association with post-listing buy-and-hold stock returns. Even stronger associations emerge when considering fundamental accounting performance, especially over longer-run horizons. In respect of the listing of Chinese A-share firms, we conjecture that greater alignment between secondary market prices and fundamentals would likely have arisen had such scores been in the public domain during the study period.     

Equity with Warrants in Private Placements

We examine private equity with warrant (unit) placements and compare them with private equity placements. Firms making unit placements are smaller, younger, riskier, and characterized by higher information asymmetry than equity‐placing firms. Furthermore, unit‐placing firms experience good pre‐placement stock performance; however, their post‐placement performance is poor and worse than that of equity‐placing firms. We also find that very few of the placed warrants are in the money at expiration. Our results are consistent with the window of opportunity hypothesis and the theory that warrants are especially desirable to a clientele of overoptimistic investors.     

THE IMPACT OF CREDITWATCH PLACEMENT ON EQUITY RETURNS AND BOND PRICES

This paper examines the equity returns and bond prices of firms around the dates of their placement on CreditWatch by Standard and Poor's. Bond prices and equity returns for companies listed on CreditWatch are compared with a set of firms whose debt was rerated during the same time period but were never placed on CreditWatch. The evidence indicates no market reaction when firms are listed on CreditWatch with subsequent rating affirmations, but a significant reaction exists in those cases where the listing was followed by downgradings. Furthermore, the bond market does not appear so efficient as the stock market since relative bond prices continue to decline as long as seven months after a rating change.     

Single stock futures: Listing selection and trading volume

On November 8, 2002, two new exchanges, OneChicago and NQLX, began trading single stock futures (SSFs). We study how these exchanges choose the listed products. The selection process is consistent with the objective of maximizing the market opening success. The estimated probability of listing is a good predictor of the single stock futures' post-listing success, as measured by their trading volume in the first year.     

The nature of the foreign listing premium: A cross-country examination

An expanding literature asserts that non-US firms achieve a unique valuation premium for listing on US equity markets. In this paper we test the uniqueness of the US foreign listing premium by examining the premium achieved by foreign listings across a global set of stock exchanges. We highlight that the documented valuation premium for listing on US exchanges is not unique but common to many home and host markets including US firms that list abroad. The cross-sectional variation in the valuation premium appears to have little association with such cross-country institutional features as investor protection rules, law enforcement practice, or accounting disclosure standards. Rather the premium appears most related to variation in pre-listing valuation ratios.     

An empirical investigation of Yankee stock offerings

This paper examines the operating and investment performance of 100 foreign firms that conduct their initial public offerings (IPOs) in the U.S. (Yankee stock offerings). The uniqueness of these firms is that the U.S. IPOs are their first public equity issue in any market, including the home market. We find significant improvement in the operating performance subsequent to these U.S. IPO events and firms from countries with poor investor protection benefit more. Compared to various benchmarks, unlike the significant underperformance of IPOs documented in many countries, these firms show no significant abnormal long-run stock market performance after 1, 3, or 5 years of seasoning. The findings are consistent with signaling and selective entry hypotheses.     

定向增发新股、整体上市与股票价格短期市场表现的实证研究

定向增发新股成为股权分置改革之后中国上市公司股权再融资的主要工具,本文从理论上解释这种现象,并运用中国证券市场定向增发新股、整体上市的数据,对宣告定向增发新股、定向增发新股实现集团公司整体上市的公司股票价格的短期市场表现进行了实证研究。实证研究结果表明,上市公司宣告定向增发新股和宣告定向增发新股实现集团公司整体上市都有正的财富效应,并且上市公司通过向控股股东或控股股东的关联企业定向增发新股实现集团公司整体上市的宣告效应要好于其他类型的定向增发新股的宣告效应。     

The Equity Performance of Firms Emerging from Bankruptcy

This study assesses the stock return performance of 131 firms emerging from Chapter 11. Using differing estimates of expected returns, we consistently find evidence of large, positive excess returns in 200 days of returns following emergence. We also examine the reaction of our sample firms' equity returns to their earnings announcements after emergence from Chapter 11. The positive and significant reactions suggest that our results are driven by the market's expectational errors, not mismeasurement of risk. The results provide an interesting contrast, but not a contradiction, to previous work that has documented poor operating performance for firms emerging from Chapter 11.     

THE MARKET'S PRICING OF DEBT IPOs

Based on the authors' recent study published in the Journal of Financial Economics , this article summarizes new evidence on the first-day and aftermarket price performance of a firm's first public offer of bonds after its equity IPO. Unlike equity IPOs, such bond IPOs are not underpriced on average. However, bonds that are more equity-like (junk bonds) are underpriced at the initial offer whereas high-grade debt is actually overpriced. This finding supports the view that riskier debt issues have a larger equity component and, as a consequence, a higher degree of information asymmetry.
The authors' study also showed that less prestigious underwriters are associated with more underpriced offers, and that the issuer's stock market listing plays an important role in determining the first-day price performance of bond IPOs. The degree of underpricing is lower for bonds issued by firms whose equity is listed on NYSE/AMEX than for bonds issued by firms listed on Nasdaq. Finally, the aftermarket performance for the full sample and various subsamples is consistent with bond market efficiency in the sense that, once prices adjust after the first day of trading, there are no clearly exploitable opportunities for excess returns.     

THE LONG-RUN PERFORMANCE OF CONVERTIBLE DEBT ISSUERS

We examine the long-run operating and stock price performance of 828 convertible debt issuers. Relative to matched, nonissuing firms, convertible debt issuers have small improvements in operating performance before the offer and significant declines in operating performance from pre- to post-issue. We examine the relation between several factors and operating performance. We find that for some pre- to post-issue periods, operating performance changes are positively related to firm leverage and the callability of the bond, and negatively related to performance run-up before the offer and investment in new assets. We also find some evidence that firms that issued equity in the three years before their convertible debt issue have larger declines in performance after the offer. Relative to matched, nonissuing firms, convertible debt issuers have superior stock price performance before the offer and significantly poor performance after the issue.