Regulations,earnings management,and post-IPO performance: The Chinese evidence

In this study, we examine whether government regulatory initiatives in China involving IPO by SOEs may have contributed to opportunistic behaviors by the issuer. We focus on two sets of IPO regulations issued between January 1, 1996 and February 11, 1999: pricing regulations, which stipulate that IPO prices be a function of accounting performance, and penalty regulations, which penalize IPO firms for overly optimistic forecasts. We find that IPO firms that report better pricing-period accounting performance have larger declines in post-IPO profitability, lower first-day stock returns and worse long-run post-IPO stock performance. Furthermore, IPO firms that make overoptimistic forecasts also have lower first-day returns and worse post-IPO stock performance. Using non-core earnings as the proxy for earnings management, we document some evidence that IPO firms that report higher pricing-period accounting performance have engaged in more income-increasing earnings management. Hence, pricing regulations may have induced IPO firms to inflate pricing-period earnings and affect the post-IPO performance negatively. On the other hand, penalty regulations have deterred IPO firms from making overoptimistic earnings forecast and therefore have a positive impact on the behavior of IPO firms.     

Management Quality and Equity Issue Characteristics: A Comparison of SEOs and IPOs

We use hand-collected data on the management quality of firms making seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) or initial public offerings (IPOs) to analyze the relationship between management quality and equity issue characteristics, and to compare the effect of management quality on SEOs versus IPOs. We hypothesize that higher quality managers are more credible to equity market investors, thereby reducing the information asymmetry they face in the market and outsiders’ information production costs. Therefore, the equity issues of higher management quality firms will have more reputable underwriters, smaller underwriting spreads, and other expenses, and smaller SEO discounts. Further, since better managers will be able to select better projects, higher management quality firms will have larger offer sizes. Finally, since SEO firms are likely to suffer from less information asymmetry compared to IPO firms, these effects will be smaller for SEOs than for IPOs. Our findings support the above hypotheses. Our direct tests of the relationship between management quality and information asymmetry, and our comparison of information asymmetry in SEOs versus IPOs provide further support for these hypotheses.     

D&O insurance and IPO performance: What can we learn from insurers?

We investigate whether a firm’s directors’ and officers’ liability insurance contract at the time of the IPO is related to insured firms’ first year post-IPO performance. We find that insurers charge a higher premium per dollar of coverage to protect the directors and officers of firms that will subsequently have poor first year post-IPO stock performance. A higher price of coverage is also associated with a higher post-IPO volatility and lower Sharpe ratio. Our results are robust to various econometric specifications and suggest that even when the high level of information asymmetry inherent to the IPO context prevails, insurers have information about the firms’ prospects that should be valuable to outside investors.     

IPO Underpricing, Firm Quality, and Analyst Forecasts

We find that IPO underpricing is positively related to post-IPO growth in sales and EBITDA, but is not significantly related to growth in earnings. Our evidence suggests that accrual reversals or earnings management may cause this inconsistency. We interpret the growth rates of sales and EBITDA as measures of firm quality, and conclude that our evidence supports the notion that IPO firms with greater underpricing are of better quality. Our tests on analysts' earnings forecast errors show that analysts are less positively biased in their earnings forecasts for IPO firms that have greater underpricing.     

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.     

Transforming the management and governance of private family firms: The role of venture capital

We analyze the role of venture capitalists (VCs) in transforming the management and governance of China's private family firms. We show, causally, that VC-backed family firms are more likely than non-VC backed family firms to experience departures of family members from top management positions and decreases in the separation between family control rights and cash-flow rights; these effects are stronger when VCs have greater equity ownership or board representation. We show that these changes in top management and governance in family firms are associated with higher IPO firm valuations and better post-IPO long run stock returns.     

The Life Cycle of Initial Public Offering Firms

This study uses an integrated and comprehensive approach to study the evolution of IPO issuing firms to the three basic post-IPO states: survive as an independent firm, get acquired, or fail. We develop multinomial logit models that utilize information available at or prior to the IPO to predict the probability of subsequent transition to the three post-IPO states. We find that lower risk, larger firm size, higher investment banker prestige, higher pre-IPO operating performance, and higher industry R&D intensity increase the probability of survival relative to failure. We also find that higher firm size, higher industry R&D intensity, and industry concentration increase the probability of survival relative to being acquired. Finally, lower risk and higher investment banker prestige increase the probability of being acquired relative to failure. Overall, we identify several factors that influence the probability of subsequent transition to one of the three basic post-IPO states.     

Are share price levels informative? Evidence from the ownership, pricing, turnover and performance of IPO firms

We ask whether a firm's choice of IPO price is informative in the sense that it relates systematically to the firm's other choices and characteristics. We find that both institutional ownership and underwriter reputation increases monotonically with the chosen IPO price level. We also find that the relationship between IPO price and underpricing is U-shaped. In contrast, post-IPO turnover displays an inverted U-shaped relation to IPO price. Moreover, firms choosing a higher (lower) stock price level experience lower (higher) mortality rates. Our results are robust to controls for market liquidity and firm size, and for partial adjustment of IPO prices based on pre-market information.     

IPO waves, product market competition, and the going public decision: Theory and evidence

We develop a new rationale for initial public offering (IPO) waves based on product market considerations. Two firms, with differing productivity levels, compete in an industry with a significant probability of a positive productivity shock. Going public, though costly, not only allows a firm to raise external capital cheaply, but also enables it to grab market share from its private competitors. We solve for the decision of each firm to go public versus remain private, and the optimal timing of going public. In equilibrium, even firms with sufficient internal capital to fund their new investment may go public, driven by the possibility of their product market competitors going public. IPO waves may arise in equilibrium even in industries which do not experience a productivity shock. Our model predicts that firms going public during an IPO wave will have lower productivity and post-IPO profitability but larger cash holdings than those going public off the wave; it makes similar predictions for firms going public later versus earlier in an IPO wave. We empirically test and find support for these predictions.     

What do employees know? Quality perception and ‘over-satisfaction’ in firms going public

Should IPO investors pay attention to employees' views on firm quality and work satisfaction (e.g., work-life-balance)? We track employees' opinions (Glassdoor) in private firms that subsequently go public. Employees' pre-IPO views are informative: positive reviews of firm/manager quality predict stronger post-IPO stock performance, while dispersion in opinions correlates with post-IPO return volatility. A striking finding is that employees' satisfaction in excess of that predicted by firm quality opinions (over-satisfaction) is negatively related to post-IPO performance. Finally, positive initial-day stock returns enhance employees' views regarding firm quality, suggesting that IPO underpricing may secure a boost in employees' morale.     

Do media connections help? Evidence from IPO pricing in China

This study examines how social connections between media executives and firms affect initial public offering (IPO) pricing using manually collected Chinese data. We find media-connected firms receive more frequent and more positive coverage than their unconnected peers, resulting in reduced IPO underpricing. However, media-connected firms have worse post-IPO market performance. Although media-connected firms have better pre-IPO accounting performance, they conduct more earnings management under the cover provided by their connected media. Additional results show that the negative effect of media connections on IPO underpricing is more pronounced for media that are not controlled by the central government and are based in the same city as the firm. It is also more pronounced for firms with less institutional ownership and non-state-owned enterprises. Our results remain valid after various robustness tests, such as alternative proxies for IPO underpricing, eliminating alternative hypotheses, matching analysis, instrumental variable analysis, as well as placebo tests. Collectively, our findings suggest that media connections compromise IPO pricing efficiency.     

Climate change disclosure and the information environment in the initial public offering market

We investigate whether climate change disclosures in initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses affect the information environment in the IPO market. We find that climate change disclosures are associated with lower IPO underpricing. Further analyses reveal that reputable underwriters and the Securities Exchange Commission's Commission Guidance Regarding Disclosure Related to Climate Change enhance the information role of climate change disclosures in the IPO market. We demonstrate that firms with more extensive climate change disclosures provide stronger hedging benefits against climate change risks in the post-IPO period. Overall, our results support the crucial role of climate change disclosures in improving the information environment of the IPO market.     

A Test of the Signaling Value of IPO Underpricing with REIT IPO-SEO Pairs

The asymmetric information hypothesis states that IPO underpricing signals superior firm value. During the post-IPO period, the market learns the firms true worth such that good quality firms issue seasoned equity at favorable prices and recoup the loss sustained at IPO. Since REITs have no special incentive to issue debt because of their tax-exempt status, and since they must pay out 95 percent of net income as dividends, REIT managers are hard pressed to raise capital through seasoned equity. Consequently, the signaling link between IPOs and SEOs is critical for REITs. Consistent with the signaling model, we find strong evidence that (1) REITs that underprice IPOs more are likely to sell seasoned equity sooner, (2) higher IPO underpricing results in larger joint amount of capital raised through an IPO-SEO pair, and (3) firms that underprice IPOs underprice SEOs as well. IPO underpricing does not mitigate the valuation loss associated with seasoned offerings, however.     

Diversification of pre-IPO ownership and foreign IPO performance

We examine the diversification of pre-IPO ownership of foreign-listed firms and how the presence of pre-IPO shareholders from the host country affects foreign issuer’s subsequent IPO and post-IPO activities. Using a sample of foreign-listed Chinese firms, we find that the presence of pre-IPO shareholders from the host country is associated with a significant reduction in direct and indirect IPO costs, especially for issuers without international sales and for firms operating at a loss. Benefits of such pre-IPO affiliation persist into the post-IPO period as manifested in greater analyst coverage and better acquisition performance in the host country. Our paper provides new insight on the value of pre-IPO ownership diversification and identifies one strategy that firms can use to overcome the liability of foreignness.     

Strategic networks,certification, and initial public offerings

This study investigates the certification effect of a firm's strategic alliance network on initial public offerings using a large data set involving 3860 IPO events from the U.S. IPO market. The results show that IPO firms with more direct alliance relationships and a more central position in the strategic network allow them to: (i) attract more prestigious underwriters and greater institutional interest; (ii) experience lower underwriting expenses, larger IPO offer sizes, and higher initial returns; and (iii) achieve superior long-term performance. Further, both the IPO firm and their strategic partners' network positions have prominent impacts on an IPO's initial issuing status and long-term performance. Our results suggest that an IPO firm's strategic alliance network serves as a useful indicator by which to determine the quality of the IPO firm.     

Underwriter reputation,earnings management and the long‐run performance of initial public offerings

This study contributes to the extant literature on the nature of earnings management surrounding initial public offerings (IPOs) by investigating the role of underwriter reputation. We argue that prestigious underwriters will protect their reputation by carefully monitoring and certifying financial information on IPO firms, thereby limiting any potential earnings manipulation. As a result, those IPO firms that are associated with more prestigious underwriters are likely to exhibit substantially less‐aggressive earnings management. Conversely, we find the existence of a negative relationship between earnings management and the post‐offer performance of an IPO firm’s stocks only for those firms associated with less‐prestigious underwriters.     

The pricing and performance of IPOs in China’s poor counties

In the context of China’s drive to alleviate poverty, we focus on the initial public offering (IPO) firms located in China’s poor counties and investigate their IPO pricing and post-IPO performance. Contrary to the findings reported for the U.S., we find that the problem of information asymmetry between Chinese firms located in rural areas and their investors is so severe that these IPO firms are associated with significantly higher underpricing. This effect is more pronounced for firms located in rural areas with poor traffic systems. We do not find significant market performance differences between rural and urban firms after their IPOs, but the operating performance of rural firms improves in the short term. Our additional analyses indicate that rural IPO firms have significantly lower investor attention and higher agency costs than urban firms. Overall, we enrich the literature on IPO pricing and the economic effects of geographic location.     

IPO Placement Risk and the Number of Co‐Managers

Previous studies show that co‐managers mainly affect initial public offering (IPO) aftermarket activities. We investigate the role of co‐managers in IPO pre‐market activities. We argue that co‐managers help reduce IPO placement risk and hypothesize that IPO issuers hire more co‐managers when placement risk is higher. We find the number of co‐managers is positively associated with three proxies for placement risk. IPOs with more price uncertainty and high‐tech IPOs hire more co‐managers, while IPOs in regulated industries hire fewer co‐managers. We also find larger IPOs, recent IPOs, and IPOs with more reputable lead underwriters hire more co‐managers.     

Banks and bubbles: How good are bankers at spotting winners?

This paper examines the bank lending relations of a large sample of technology and nontechnology firms that went public during the 1996–2000 period. We use a unique hand-collected data set to examine the characteristics of firms that establish pre- Initial Public Offering (IPO) bank lending relations and whether post-IPO performance is related to the existence and size of pre-IPO banking relations. We find that the majority of IPO firms have banking relations before they go public. Firms with banking relations are older, more profitable or, in the case of tech firms, have lower losses, and are more likely to have funding from venture capitalists than firms without banking relations. We also find that banks lent aggressively to technology firms in the sense that current earnings and cash flows were significantly less important in determining banking relations for technology firms than for nontechnology firms. Consistent with the importance of so-called soft information in lending decisions, we find that, controlling for ex ante observable risk measures, there is a positive and significant relation between improvements in post-IPO operating performance and the existence and size of pre-IPO banking relations. Overall, our results indicate that firms with the best current and future prospects establish banking relations. Our findings provide an explanation as to why investors could interpret lending relations as a positive signal of firm quality.