Why Do Companies Issue Convertible Bond Loans? An Empirical Analysis for the Canadian Market

Abstract

We study the announcement effects and their determinants of convertible debt issues in the Canadian market in order to identify issuer motives. The average wealth effect for the three-day event window around the announcement of convertible bonds between 1991 and 2004 is a significantly negative -2.7%. When the issues are classified into equity- and debt-like, we find that the wealth effects are significantly more negative for the equity-like convertible bond issuers. Equity-like convertibles are significantly negatively affected by agency costs of equity. However, agency costs of debt do not have a significant effect on equity-like convertibles and agency costs of equity do not have a significant effect on debt-like convertibles. These findings suggest that convertibles are used to mitigate different aspects of informational asymmetries. These findings are in line with motives proposed by Stein (1992). Moreover, we find that convertible debt offers announced by income trusts, which have become a special feature of the Canadian market, experience significantly less negative wealth effects than similar offers announced by other issuers. This result can be explained by a more debt-like convertible design and/or very low agency costs of equity in case of income trusts.