Venture capitalist participation and the post-issue operating performance of IPO firms

Previous studies have identified the value-added potential of venture capitalist monitoring in the initial public offering (IPO) market. We test this proposition by comparing the post-issue operating performance of venture capitalist-backed IPOs with a matched sample of non-venture capitalist-backed IPOs. We find that venture capitalist-backed IPO firms exhibit relatively superior post-issue operating performance compared to non-venture capital-backed IPO firms. Further, the market appears to recognize the value of monitoring by venture capitalists as reflected in the higher valuations at the time of the IPO. Finally, we find that proxies for the quality of venture capitalist monitoring are positively related to post-issue operating performance.     

Looking Attractive until You Sell: Earnings Management,Lockup Expiration,and Venture Capitalists

Earnings management occurs when managerial discretion allows managers to influence reported earnings and thus mislead some investors about the underlying economic performance and quality of the firm. This study considers how potential investors may guard against earnings management by observing negative stock price reaction at the lockup expiration period of initial public offering (IPO) firms as a negative signal. Findings from a sample of 160 newly public firms show that earnings management behaviour is stronger in IPO firms backed by venture capitalists (VCs). Moreover, VC reputation negatively moderates this relationship such that IPO firms backed by reputable VCs are less likely to manage earnings, suggesting that reputable VCs serve an auditing function following an IPO. Overall, we provide insights into signalling theory by examining negative signals arising from the behaviour of multiple agents in an IPO firm.     

Informational externalities of initial public offerings: Does venture capital backing matter?

We examine the role of venture capital backing on informational externalities generated by IPO firms. Theoretical models predict that going public firms generate positive externalities creating a spillover effect for other firms to go public. In this paper, we posit that venture backed IPOs convey positive information about industry and this information is transferred to rival firms. We also hypothesize that intra-industry information transfer varies with rivals’ characteristics and IPO price revisions generate additional information that affects rivals’ valuation. The results show that rivals have positive valuation effects in response to venture backed IPOs and no significant reaction in response to non-venture backed IPOs. We find evidence that the effect on rival firms is stronger if they operate in less concentrated industries and have high growth opportunities. The larger the IPO proceeds, the higher the magnitude of rivals ‘valuation effects. Positive (negative) information revealed in the form of upward (downward) price revisions significantly impacts rivals’ reaction in response to venture backed IPOs.     

Accounting Scandals in IPO Firms: Do Underwriters and VCs Help?

We examine whether underwriter reputation, venture capitalist (VC) backing, and VC reputation are related to the probability that a newly public firm has serious accounting problems. Using a novel data set, we find that the probability of restatement by an initial public offering (IPO) firm is positively related to underwriter reputation and negatively related to VC backing, VC reputation, and VC maturity. Our results do not appear to be driven by the endogeneity of underwriter reputation or VC backing. Our findings suggest that while VCs positively influence the financial reporting quality of IPO firms, underwriters’ concerns about revenue generation outweigh their concerns about reputation.     

Are venture capitalist-backed IPOs more innovative? Evidence from an emerging market

This study examines whether venture capital (VC)-backed IPOs are more innovative than otherwise equivalent non-VC-backed IPOs. Using manually collected R&D records from annual reports and patent data from the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (CSIPO) from 2007 to 2012, we find that VC-backed IPOs have higher R&D expenditures and more patents granted in the three years after IPOs. More specifically, they have more invention, application, and design patents in post-IPO. We use a two-stage instrumental variable, propensity score matching, difference-in-differences approach to mitigate selection biases and find our results to be consistent with our hypothesis. We conclude that VCs can positively influence IPO firms to increase R&D expenditures and innovative output levels in China. In addition, we document that the government ownership adversely affects innovation of VC-backed firms. Policy implications are discussed.     

Venture Capital Exit Rights

We investigate when and how venture capital contracts use exit rights such as drag‐along and tag‐along rights. Utilizing a data set of venture capital contracts from Germany, we find that almost all contracts allocate exit rights to the venture capitalist (VC) rather than to the entrepreneur. In our data set, the vast majority of exit rights deal with the sale of the entire company to a strategic investors rather than with initial public offerings (IPOs). We show that venture capital contracts include exit rights to mitigate potential hold‐up problems of the VC in the case of exit.     

Founders' Characteristics,Venture Capital Syndication and Governance in Entrepreneurial IPOs

Using a unique sample of 444 entrepreneurial IPOs in the UK and France this paper examines links between founders' characteristics, venture capital (VC) syndication and the development of effective boards in entrepreneurial firms. It argues that VC-backed IPOs suffer from two sets of agency problems which are related to principal-agent and principal-principal relationships between the founders and members of the VC syndicate. The empirical evidence shows that there is a curvilinear relationship between the intensity of founders' external ties and VC syndication. Founders' retained share ownership is negatively associated with VC syndication. We also find that in syndicated IPOs there is a higher involvement of passive private equity firms and “business angels” investing alongside VC firms, both in terms of their number and equity presence. VC-syndicated IPOs have more independent boards than IPOs with no VC involvement. Board independence is negatively associated with founders' retained equity. These results are consistent with the assumption that board independence is used to mitigate agency costs associated with VC involvement in IPO firms. Our findings also identify significant differences in governance characteristics between the UK and France. While French IPOs have less independent boards, they involve more VC backing in general and syndicated VC funding in particular, than UK IPOs.     

风险投资的政府背景对IPO的影响

中国的风险资本中政府资金一直占有较大比例,本文基于中小企业板数据研究政府背景风险投资对IPO抑价及IPO后收益是否有影响,实证结果发现政府背景风险投资对两者均没有显著影响.因此,政府不应过多地投资于风险投资,而应该完善风险投资的政策环境.     

Doing Well by Doing Good? Community Development Venture Capital

This paper examines the investments and performance of community development venture capital (CDVC). We find substantial differences between CDVCs and traditional VCs: CDVC investments are far more likely to be in nonmetropolitan regions and in regions with little prior venture activity. CDVC investments are likely to be in earlier stage investments and in industries outside the venture capital mainstream that have lower probabilities of successful exit. Even after controlling for this unattractive transaction mixture, the probability of a CDVC investment being successfully exited is lower. One benefit of CDVCs may be their effect in bringing traditional VCs to underserved regions—controlling for the presence of traditional VC investments, each additional CDVC investment results in an additional 0.06 new traditional VC firms in a region.     

The impact of initial public offerings on innovations: Short-termism or initial governance force exit?

We study the impact of initial public offerings (IPOs) on corporate innovations in China. The findings suggest that going public significantly impedes corporate innovations by lowering overall innovation quality. For firms with shareholders selling or pledging less shares after IPO, the number of patents increases, but the nonself-citations per patent decrease relative to matched non-IPO firms. In contrast, for firms with shareholders selling or pledging more shares after IPOs, both the number of patents and nonself-citations per patent decrease. The magnitudes of impact in the latter are stronger than those of former, supporting the initial governance force exit hypothesis.     

Why do companies choose to go ipos? New results using data from Taiwan

We examine the determinants of IPOs in Taiwan for the period 1989 to 2000. The regulations in Taiwan permit us to identify firms that met IPO requirements but chose not to go public, allowing for comparisons of firms that choose IPOs and those do not. We find strong evidence that IPOs are not motivated by financing need, that larger and profitable firms are more likely to list equity, and that venture capital provides certification to firm credibility. Other findings provide support for information asymmetry, listing costs, liquidity, owners’ diversification desire, timing, and facilitation of M&As as factors influencing IPO decisions. (JEL G32, G15, G24)     

Donating Money to Get Money: The Role of Corporate Philanthropy in Stakeholder Reactions to IPOs

This study examines how stakeholders' investment time horizons interact with information about corporate giving in initial public offering (IPO) firms. Specifically, we build a model that explains how corporate philanthropy affects IPO performance. We find that at the IPO‐preparation stage, corporate giving is negatively related to underwriter prestige, venture capital investment, and IPO financing costs. We also find that at the IPO‐issuance stage, negative media coverage of IPOs moderates the U‐shaped relationship between corporate giving and market premiums. At the IPO‐trading stage, we find that corporate giving only positively influences the market premiums for IPO firms that are the subject of negative media reports. Our findings contribute to the signalling theory by showing how various stakeholders interpret the same signals differently, and they have implications for understanding how the relationship between corporate philanthropy and corporate financial performance materializes in the IPO markets.     

The influence of private equity and venture capital on the post-IPO performance of newly-public acquirers

This paper examines the influence of private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) ownership on the post-initial public offering (IPO) performance of newly-public acquirers. Our results show that acquirers with PE- or VC-backing at the time of the IPO perform better long-term than acquirers without such backing. More importantly, while acquirers without financial backing experience negative long-run returns from first-year acquisitions, acquirers with continued PE- and VC-backing perform significantly better when making acquisitions within the first year after going public. However, acquiring firms and investors should be aware that for mergers in the second and third year post-IPO, continued VC ownership has a detrimental long-term impact. In contrast, higher levels of continued PE ownership tend to have a positive relationship with long-run performance.     

The dynamic investment and exit decisions of venture capitals

This study develops a continuous time model to examine a complete two-stage decision process for venture capitals (VCs), including investment in the private market at Stage 1 and exit through IPO in the public market at Stage 2. Optimal timings, investment terms, and exit decisions are investigated using the real options game theory under two cases: the same required returns in the public and private markets and a higher required return in the private market than in the public market. Our results indicate that the same required returns in the public and private markets generate an optimal investment decision at Stage 1 without relation to the exit decision in Stage 2. However, when the required return in the private market is higher than that in the public market, the exit decision will influence the investment decision. The size of the initial capital, ownership structure, growth rate and risk of industry, required returns in public and private capital markets, extent of lock-up period price pressure, and transaction costs of financing are important factors influencing the equilibrium results.     

Motives and consequences of IPOs in cold periods

We analyze the motives and long-term stock price performance of firms that pursue IPOs in cold IPO periods. We find that firms are more likely to engage in an IPO during a cold period when their earnings are relatively high and are expected to decline in the future. We also find that IPO firms during a cold period are more likely to have managed their earnings prior to the IPO. Furthermore, we find that cold IPO firms experience significantly weaker stock price performance than hot IPO firms, and results are robust to different criteria for defining hot and cold IPO periods, different measures of stock price performance, and different investment holding periods. We find that investment opportunities, the backing of a venture capitalist, and an increase in earnings in the year of the IPO lead to significantly higher long term stock price performance of IPO firms. Our multivariate models confirm the adverse cold IPO period effect on stock price performance even after controlling for the IPO motives and the firm's earnings performance. Our results also hold within the post-Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) era.     

风险投资与IPO抑价——基于创业板上市公司的实证分析

自创业板设立以来,创业板市场定价效率未能充分体现,创业板上市企业IPO抑价率较高,风险资本支持的企业IPO抑价率高于非风险资本支持的企业,风险资本的持股比例、介入时间及持股机构数量都和IPO抑价有一定的关系。     

How Does Ambiguity Influence IPO Underpricing? The Role of the Signalling Environment

We explore the relationship between ambiguity, or low information clarity, in the IPO prospectus of newly public firms and their underpricing. Consistent with signalling theory, we find that IPO underpricing is low when the prospectus contains less ambiguous information that creates a more reliable signal conveying the quality of the IPO firm. However, the positive association between ambiguity and IPO underpricing is less pronounced when IPO firms display low strategic conformity with other firms in the industry, operate in industries with high valuation heterogeneity, or are medium‐sized. Using a sample of 398 IPOs between 1998 and 2007, our results support these predictions. This study shows the importance of the signalling environment influencing boundedly rational signal recipients interpreting ambiguous signals.     

The Relationship between Slack Resources and the Performance of Entrepreneurial Firms: The Role of Venture Capital and Angel Investors

In this study, we seek to further delineate factors that condition the relationship between slack resources and firm performance. To do so, we develop and test a model that establishes the role of venture capital (VC) and angel investors as powerful external stakeholders who positively moderate the slack–performance relationship. In addition, we provide more insight into this relationship by examining differences between these two types of private investors and by examining the role of their ownership stakes. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 1215 private firms, including VC‐backed firms, angel‐backed firms, and similar firms without such investors. We find that the presence of VC investors positively moderates the relationship between both financial and human slack resources and firm performance, while angel investors only positively moderate the effect of human resource slack. Further, VC investors are only marginally better at helping entrepreneurs to extract value from human resource slack than angel investors and they are no better when it comes to financial slack. Finally, we find that the impact of financial and human resource slack on firm performance is more positive in VC‐backed firms when investors hold high ownership stakes, an effect which is significantly stronger than when angel investors hold high ownership stakes.     

创业投资声誉、创业板IPOs初始收益和长期业绩

以我国创业板市场IPOs为样本,引入创业投资声誉对IPO折抑价理论模型进行修正,采用多元回归和两阶段回归方法,实证检验创业投资声誉与创业板IPOs初始收益和长期业绩之间的关系后发现:我国创业板市场中创业投资核证监督作用微弱;创业投资声誉对IPOs初始收益无显著影响;创业投资声誉对IPO后企业长期业绩有显著正效应。本文的研究结论对创投声誉下的创业板发行制度建设有积极作用。     

风险投资背景异质性与退出时机选择——基于信任视角的实证研究

退出是风险投资获得投资回报、实现投资目标的关键环节,以我国2009—2016年深圳中小板和创业板IPO公司为研究样本,分析风险投资背景异质性对其退出时机的影响,并进一步检验风险投资机构与创业企业之间的信任在其中的调节作用。研究发现：风险投资背景异质性对其退出存在显著影响,与独立风险投资相比,公司风险投资在创业企业IPO后退出企业时间更晚;无论是基于声誉的信任还是基于制度的信任,风险投资机构与创业企业之间双向的信任都会促使公司风险投资更晚退出创业企业;相对于独立风险投资,公司风险投资更晚退出企业是为了追求战略回报。研究表明创业企业可以通过提升风险投资对其信任度来维护其投资管理,而风险投资机构则可以通过提升创业企业对其信任度来加深互惠互信的合作关系。