Chinese IPO activity,pricing, and market cycles

We examine the activity, pricing, and market cycles of 1,380 Chinese A share IPOs over the period 1991–2005 and find initial underpricing of 238%. The government restrictions on IPO offer price and quota allocation cause pricing structural breaks and attribute more than half of initial underpricing. A multifactor model that includes firm’s characteristics, excess demand for IPO shares, and the government restrictions explains cross-sectional initial returns, after controlling for industrial differences and stock market conditions. In addition, monthly IPO volume and average initial return are highly correlated. A VAR model indicates that initial return leads IPO volume by 6 months.     

THE UNDERPRICING OF INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS,EX ANTE UNCERTAINTY,AND PROXY SELECTION

This paper reconsiders the prediction that the underpricing of IPOs is increasing in ex ante uncertainty by objectively establishing proxies for ex ante uncertainty on definitional grounds rather than by appealing to intuitive arguments. Based on a sample of 420 U.S. IPOs from the period 1976–1985, the results suggest that there is a hierarchy of proxies. The results also support the prediction of a positive relation between underpricing and ex ante uncertainty. Finally, the results suggest that as the effectiveness of a selected proxy as a measure of ex ante uncertainty increases, so does the strength of the relation between the degree of underpricing and ex ante uncertainty as measured by that proxy.     

Initial and Long-Run IPO Returns in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

This article provides original evidence on IPO underpricing and long-run underperformance in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and compares results to the European Union’s developed capital markets from 2000 to 2009. Using both index-adjusted and CAPM-adjusted returns, we find significant underpricing that is significantly higher than underpricing of comparable IPOs in the European Union’s developed capital markets. We show that the CEE’s initial IPO returns also exhibit significantly higher volatility. In line with the asymmetric information theory, we indicate that smaller IPOs in the CEE region have greater underpricing than the larger IPOs. Contrary to the literature, we unambiguously confirm long-run underperformance toward the benchmarks. In some model specifications, we also find that IPO long-run underperformance in the CEE region is less present than in the European Union’s developed capital markets.     

Voluntary Disclosure of Management Earnings Forecasts in IPO Prospectuses

Asymmetric information and mechanisms for its resolution in the initial public offering (IPO) process are subjects of extensive research and debate. In this paper, we investigate the impact of one such mechanism, namely voluntary disclosure of management earnings forecasts by issuers of IPOs, as a means of reducing asymmetric information as well as ex ante uncertainty. Our focus is on the relative importance of this voluntary disclosure mechanism on both IPO underpricing and post‐issue return performance. Our results indicate that management earnings forecasts provide important and incremental information compared to other means of reducing asymmetric information, and these disclosures appear to improve the environment of IPO issuance. For example, our underpricing results show that firms that choose to provide forecasts leave 'less money on the table' with a lower degree of underpricing. In terms of post‐issue performance, firms whose forecasts turn out to be optimistic are penalized significantly relative to other forecasters and non‐forecasters.     

Evidence on Price Stabilization and Underpricing in Early IPO Returns

Using data on 560 firm-commitment initial public offerings of common stock for the 1982–1983 period, we find that the cross-sectional distribution of one-day returns is modeled better as a mixture of two distributions, with the parameter estimates of one distribution being consistent with underpricing and the other with price stabilization. Further, the evidence that early IPO returns are drawn from a mixture distribution persists for at least four weeks. The implications of these results for the analysis of IPO returns are illustrated by examining the influence of a measure of ex ante price uncertainty on IPO pricing.     

Disclosure of Intended Use of Proceeds and Underpricing in Initial Public Offerings

We use the context of a company's initial public offering (IPO) of equity securities as a capital‐markets setting to empirically study the economic consequences of endogenous disclosure. In particular, we examine the relation between the extent of dollar detail an IPO issuer provides regarding their intended use of proceeds and first‐day underpricing. We document substantial variation in the specificity of this disclosure and find that an increase in such specificity is associated with lower IPO underpricing. Overall, our results suggest that IPOs that provide specific use‐of‐proceeds disclosures have less ex ante uncertainty, in the sense that these disclosures help investors estimate the dispersion of secondary market values. Our paper contributes to the empirical accounting literature by documenting an association between voluntary disclosure and what is arguably the foremost cost of raising initial equity capital (i.e., IPO underpricing).     

The price of rapid exit in venture capital-backed IPOs

This paper proposes an explanation for two empirical puzzles surrounding initial public offerings (IPOs). Firstly, it is well documented that IPO underpricing increases during “hot issue” periods. Secondly, venture capital (VC) backed IPOs are less underpriced than non-venture capital backed IPOs during normal periods of activity, but the reverse is true during hot issue periods: VC backed IPOs are more underpriced than non-VC backed ones. This paper shows that when IPOs are driven by the initial investor’s desire to exit from an existing investment in order to finance a new venture, both the value of the new venture and the value of the existing firm to be sold in the IPO drive the investor’s choice of price and fraction of shares sold in the IPO. When this is the case, the availability of attractive new ventures increases equilibrium underpricing, which is what we observe during hot issue periods. Moreover, I show that underpricing is affected by the severity of the moral hazard problem between an investor and the firm’s manager. In the presence of a moral hazard problem the degree of equilibrium underpricing is more sensitive to changes in the value of the new venture. This can explain why venture capitalists, who often finance firms with more severe moral hazard problems, underprice IPOs less in normal periods, but underprice more strongly during hot issue periods. Further empirical implications relating the fraction of shares sold and the degree of underpricing are presented.      

Issuers’ incentives and tests of Baron’s model of IPO underpricing

This paper reexamines the validity of Baron’s (J Financ 37:955–976, 1982) model of IPO underpricing, in which IPO underpricing is caused by asymmetric information between issuers and investment bankers. Muscarella and Vetsuypens (J Financ Econ 24:125–135, 1989) find that lead-manager IPOs are significantly more underpriced than non-self-marketed IPOs and conclude that their empirical results do not support Baron’s model. We compare self-marketed underwriters’ IPOs with non-self-marketed underwriters’ IPOs and with IPOs they lead. Our empirical results show that it is premature to reject Baron’s model of IPO underpricing when we take issuer incentives into account.     

IPOs,clustering, indirect learning and filing independently

IPO underpricing has been attributed to valuation uncertainty, which can be at least partially resolved by the indirect learning associated with IPO clustering [Benveniste, L.M., Ljungqvist, A., Wilhelm, W.J., Yu, X.Y., 2003. Evidence of information spillovers in the production of investment banking services. Journal of Finance 58, 577–608]. We examine why firms might choose not to issue their IPOs contemporaneously with clusters of similar firms, forgoing opportunities to learn from their peers. We find that the willingness to file an IPO without the benefit of indirect learning from peer firm IPOs is directly related to insiders’ needs for portfolio diversification and the firm’s need to raise capital.     

Let us work together: The impact of customer strategic alliances on IPO underpricing and post-IPO performance

Leveraging the availability of three years of pre-IPO data and related vs unrelated-party customer information for Chinese firms, we examine the impact of customer strategic alliances (CSA) on IPO underpricing from 2007 to 2015. Our core findings suggest that IPO firms with CSAs have less IPO underpricing than those without such a relationship. The decrease in underpricing is more salient for IPO firms that have non-related-party customers. Additional analysis suggests that the core findings are primarily driven by firms with good information environment pre-IPO, including high audit quality, high analyst following, and low earnings management. We interpret the results as indicating that a good pre-IPO information environment enhances the credibility of CSA relationships and signals high IPO quality. Furthermore, we document that a CSA relationship has a positive impact on an IPO firm's post-IPO performance, especially when the firm has non-related-party customers. Overall, CSAs reduce IPO underpricing and enhance IPO returns post-IPO.     

Information Collection and IPO Underpricing

This study provides new evidence that IPO underpricing is economic rents paid for investor to gather costly information. Subrahmanyam and Titman (1999) report that diverse investor information, once aggregated in the public market, could provide a more informative stock price and accurate feedback to firm’s investment decision. I investigate the hypothesis that IPO underpricing as economic rents could be higher, when investor information is diverse. In support of this hypothesis, I find a positive and significant correlation between the extent of underpricing and the information diversity measure proposed by Barron et al. (1998). There is a positive and significant correlation between this information diversity measure and an IPO firm’s subsequent (absolute) change in capital and R&D expenditures. In addition, firms with high information diversity measure and change in subsequent investment exhibit a better subsequent return performance than firms with low diversity and change in investment. This is consistent with the proposition that investor information serves as useful feedback for managers in the IPO market.JEL Classification: G32     

Conflict of Interest in Commercial Bank Equity Underwriting

This paper examines the pricing characteristics of initial public offerings underwritten by commercial banks. Assuming IPO underpricing is directly related to ex ante uncertainty, if the market rationally perceives these commercial banks to have a conflict of interest, these securities should have more underpricing than non-commercial bank underwritten initial public offerings (all else being equal). On the other hand, if the market believes that commercial bank involvement signals firm quality, less underpricing should be observed. This topic has recently gained in importance with the passage of the Financial Services Reform Act in November 1999. We find that the underpricing of commercial bank underwritten initial public offerings in which the firm had a previous banking relationship with the underwriter is significantly less than those underwritten by investment banks.     

Bookbuilding,the option to withdraw,and the timing of IPOs

The ability to withdraw IPOs when demand is weak increases expected proceeds and provides issuers with option value. To enhance this value, the SEC adopted in 2001 the ‘public-to-private’ safe harbor Rule 155 and simplified Rule 477 for withdrawing offerings. The option value can exceed the underpricing associated with soliciting investor demand. Hence, issuers might prefer bookbuilding despite the associated underpricing even if they could sell via fixed price at full expected value. The option value increases faster than underpricing with ex ante uncertainty, generating predictions regarding the use of bookbuilding and the timing of IPOs, and leading to a distinct theory of hot IPO markets.     

Understanding Investor Sentiment: The Case of Soccer

We examine the extent to which the stock market's inefficient responses to resolutions of uncertainty depend on investors’ biased ex ante beliefs regarding the probability distribution of future event outcomes or their ex post irrational reactions to these outcomes. We use a sample of publicly traded European soccer clubs and analyze their returns around important matches. Using a novel proxy for investors’ expectations based on contracts traded on betting exchanges (prediction markets), we find that within our sample, investor sentiment is attributable, in part, to a systematic bias in investors’ ex ante expectations. Investors are overly optimistic about their teams’ prospects ex ante and, on average, end up disappointed ex post, leading to negative postgame abnormal returns. Our evidence may have important implications for firms’ investment decisions and corporate control transactions.     

IPO pricing: growth rates implied in offer prices

This paper studies the valuation of companies going public and defines a methodology to infer the growth expectations implicit in the prices of their Initial Public Offering (IPO). The proposed reverse-engineered DCF model is operable by individual investors, as it does not require access to private information or sell-side analysts’ forecasts. Applying the procedure to a sample of IPOs in three European countries (France, Italy, and Germany), we estimate the cash flow growth implied by offer prices and examine the bias of implied growth in comparison to the realized. We find that the estimated growth in cash flow is much higher than its actual realization, with the median IPO firm overvalued at the offering by 74%. Estimation errors increase with IPO firms’ leverage and underpricing, and decrease with age, size, and book-to-market ratios. Further tests find that post-IPO stock returns are lower for issues whose implied growth is more upward biased.     

Underpricing and Ex Post Value Uncertainty

As documented by a vast empirical literature, initial public offerings (IPOs) are characterized by underpricing. A number of papers have shown that underpricing is directly related to the amount of ex ante uncertainty concerning the IPOs valuation. Recent theoretical papers propose that not all value uncertainty is resolved prior to the start of trading, but rather continues to be resolved in the beginning of the after market. We term this type of uncertainty as ex post value uncertainty and develop proxies for it. We find strong support for the existence of ex post value uncertainty and find that including a proxy for it more than doubles the explanatory power of previous models.     

The Opening, Short, Medium and Long Term Performance of Canadian Unit Trust Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)

Abstract:   This paper investigates the initial pricing and performance of Canadian unit trust IPOs over a three‐ to four‐year period and then draws implications for the efficiency of the Canadian market. Overall, the results confirm the following: in the short term, unit trust IPOs are underpriced and outperform the Canadian market; in the medium term, IPOs are fairly priced and neither outperform nor underperform the Canadian market; and in the long term, IPOs are fairly priced but underperform the Canadian market. In addition, our results confirm that the size of underpricing is related to ex‐ante uncertainty about the value of the issue. Ex‐ante uncertainty proxies, namely total risk, exchange listing, relative bid‐ask spread, and relative volume of initial trade, all explain the size of underpricing. When the effects of these factors are controlled, the results confirm that Canadian unit trust IPOs are indeed overpriced in the short term but underpriced in the long term. We conclude that the Canadian unit trust IPO market appears to be inefficient in the short and long term, but over the medium, the market appears to be efficient.     

The Credibility of Earnings Forecasts in IPO Prospectuses and Underpricing

This paper provides empirical evidence of the impact of the voluntary disclosure of management earnings forecasts in IPO prospectuses and of the credibility of these forecasts, as perceived by investors at the time of the IPO. We measure forecast credibility ex ante with two approaches: (i) a vector of determinants of credibility that are observable by market participants at the time of the issue and (ii) the predicted value of the forecast error based on some of these determinants. Controlling for the firm's decision on whether or not to issue a forecast, we find that the issue of a forecast reduces underpricing. We find that the quality of the firm's governance and of the auditor and underwriter associated with the issue seems to act as a substitute to the disclosure of an earnings forecast in the prospectus, so that they significantly decrease the level of underpricing only for non‐forecasters. However, despite our various approaches to measure ex ante credibility, we find no association between the pricing of the issue and perceived forecast credibility at the time of the IPO.     

Signaling in the Internet craze of initial public offerings

We explain the clustering of underpricing in initial public offerings (IPOs). The model features an industry with aggregate demand uncertainty and asymmetric information about firms' quality. In the IPO market, firms can signal quality by underpricing or under-issuing new shares. Expected aggregate demand for the industry's products increases with the publicity that the industry creates through IPO underpricing. We show that asymmetric information and expectations on aggregate product demand interact with each other to generate multiple equilibria. Underpriced IPOs cluster in one equilibrium but not in the other. We use these results to explain why the clustering often occurs in particular industries, is short-lived, and is sensitive to economic conditions.