Are hospitality industry IPO stock returns predictable?

Abstract

We examine the post-IPO excess stock returns of hospitality firms from 1996 to 2012 and find underperformance relative to the market on average. However, there are large differences in returns and some firms significantly outperform. We demonstrate that a substantial portion of this variation can be reliably predicted by utilising pre-IPO financial measures such as firm size, free cash flows, discretionary accruals, and Altman's Z. Our findings are potentially valuable to prospective hospitality IPO investors in selecting which stocks to buy and to hospitality firm managers in setting IPO issue prices.