Equity Issuance Costs Research Articles

Liquidity Management at REITs: Listed & Public Non-traded

Public non-traded REITs have high equity issuance costs, weak governance mechanisms, finite-life structures, and defined periods when there is access to equity. These conditions affect the precautionary needs, transactional motives, and agency issues associated with liquidity management. Public non-traded REITs have high cash accumulations from equity issuance and maintain significantly higher cash ratios during the offering. When compared to a matched sample of listed REITs, cash ratios are higher for non-traded REITs and bank credit lines are less accessible. Investment growth at public non-traded REITs is found to be extremely sensitive to cash on hand.

The effects of removing barriers to equity issuance

We study the consequences of a US deregulation allowing small firms to accelerate their public equity issuance. Post-deregulation, affected firms double their reliance on public equity and transition away from private investments in public equity compared to similar untreated firms. The net effect is a 5.7 percentage point or 49% increase in the annual probability of raising equity. This is accompanied by a reduction in equity issuance costs, an increase in investment, and a decrease in leverage. Our findings provide evidence that reducing equity issuance barriers benefits issuers even in highly developed markets.

Aggregate Bank Capital and Credit Dynamics

We develop a novel dynamic model of banking showing that aggregate bank capital is an important determinant of bank lending. In our model commercial banks finance their loans with deposits and equity, while facing equity issuance costs. Because of this financial friction, banks build equity buffers to absorb negative shocks. Aggregate bank capital determines the dynamics of lending. Notably, the equilibrium loan rate is a decreasing function of aggregate capitalization. The competitive equilibrium is constrained inefficient, because banks do not internalize the consequences of individual lending decisions for the future loss-absorbing capacity of the banking sector. In particular, we find that unregulated banks lend too much. Imposing a minimum capital ratio helps tame excessive lending, which enhances stability of the banking system.

The leverage externalities of credit default swaps

This paper provides the first empirical evidence of the externalities of credit default swaps (CDS). We find that a firm's leverage is lower when a larger proportion of its revenue is derived from CDS-referenced customers. This finding is robust to alternative samples and measures, placebo tests, and the selection of customers by suppliers. Moreover, firms affected by customer CDS trading issue equity to lower leverage, and their equity issuance costs are lower. These findings are consistent with the view that CDS trading on customers improves the information environment for suppliers. Therefore, while many firms are not directly linked to CDS trading, CDS trading on their customers has spillover effects on these firms’ financial policies.

Rising Intangible Capital, Shrinking Debt Capacity, and the US Corporate Savings Glut

This paper explores the hypothesis that the rise in intangible capital is a fundamental driver of the secular trend in US corporate cash holdings over the last decades. Using a new measure, we show that intangible capital is the most important firm-level determinant of corporate cash holdings and that its importance increases monotonically with firms' financial constraint status and investment inflexibility. On average, our measure accounts for almost as much of the secular increase in cash since the 1970s as all other determinants together. We then develop a new dynamic model of corporate cash holdings with two productive assets, tangible and intangible capital. The interplay of real and financial frictions in the model leads firms with growth options to optimally hold cash in anticipation of (S,s)-type adjustments in physical capital because they want to avoid raising costly external finance. Since only tangible capital can be pledged as collateral, a shift toward intangible capital shrinks the debt capacity of firms and leads them to hold more cash in order to preserve financial flexibility. This mechanism is quantitatively important, as our model predicts an increase in cash holdings in line with the data in response to a realistic increase in intangible capital. We also consider alternative hypotheses, such as declining interest rates and rising equity issuance costs. Overall, our results suggest that technological change has contributed significantly to recent changes in corporate liquidity management.

The Role of Debt and Equity Finance Over the Business Cycle

If equity issuance is introduced into the costly state verification framework and the friction firms face in raising equity is acyclical, then the model cannot simultaneously generate procyclical equity issuance and a countercyclical default rate. This requires a countercyclical equity issuance friction. With a countercyclical friction, the model can also overturn an undesirable feature of the standard debt-only model: dampening of shocks. To quantitatively match observed patterns, the friction in the cost of raising equity has to vary a lot more over the business cycle than can be justified by estimates of cyclical changes in direct equity issuance costs.

Can Equity Issuance Costs Explain the Low Leverage of High Growth Firms?

This paper shows documents the fact that high growth firms maintain low debt levels. It then shows a dynamic model of financing and investment with costs of equity issuance rationalizes these findings. In the model firms keep debt at a level that lets them finance their investment purely from retained earnings.

Seasoned equity offerings: stock market liquidity and duration of the completion cycle

PurposeShort‐term cash need plays a critical role in equity issuance decisions. Consequently, the ease with which a seasoned equity offer (SEO) is completed can have a direct effect on the cost of raising equity. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether liquidity is likely to affect the ease with which an offer is completed, as proxied by the length of the offer.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses multiple regression analysis to establish the link between liquidity and the duration of the SEO completion cycle. To provide support to the findings, event study methodology is employed to study the abnormal volume turnover during the pre‐SEO announcement period for firms with shorter and longer registration periods.FindingsThe paper finds that firms with greater liquidity come to market sooner. The results indicate a small yet significant effect of liquidity on the duration of the SEO completion cycle. There is also evidence that lower pre‐announcement period volume turnover is associated with a longer registration period – which has some implications for issuance costs. The results are robust to the inclusion of industry or firm effects, use of different regression specifications, and application of alternative liquidity measures.Originality/valueThis paper belongs to the growing literature that examines the link between liquidity and the firm's equity issuance costs. It adds to the literature by: examining the determinants of the time it takes to complete an offering; providing the evidence that liquidity may affect the ease with which investment bankers place new shares; and presenting the evidence using newer measures of liquidity based on low‐frequency data.

Transitional dynamics of dividend and capital gains tax cuts

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to study the impact of the 2003 dividend and capital gains tax cuts. In the model, firms are heterogeneous in productivity and make investment and financing decisions subject to capital adjustment costs, equity issuance costs, and collateral constraints. We show that when the dividend and capital gains tax cuts are unexpected and permanent, dividend payments, equity issuance, and aggregate investment rise immediately. By contrast, when these tax cuts are unexpected and temporary, aggregate investment falls in the short run. This fall allows firms to distribute large dividends initially in response to the temporary dividend tax cut. We also find that the effects of a temporary dividend tax cut are very different from those of a temporary capital gains tax cut.

Costly Financing, Optimal Payout Policies and the Valuation of Corporate Debt

We present a cash-flow based model of corporate debt valuation that incorporates two novel features. First, we allow for the separation and optimal determination of the firm's debt-service and dividend policies; in particular, the firm is allowed to maintain cash reserves to meet future debt obligations. Second, our model admits the possibility that raising resources through issuance of new equity could be a costly procedure. In contrast, much of the previous literature has considered only dividend polices that are the consequences of debt-service policy, and has assumed new equity issuance costs are either zero or infinite. We provide an analytical characterization of equilibrium behavior in our model. Numerical analysis of the equilibrium reveals that our model predicts substantially higher yield spread than the canonical Merton-type model. More importantly, we find that the two novel features of our model are crucial determinants of not only the overall spread that result but also of the marginal impact of allowing for debt-service to be strategic. Specifically: (a) assuming residual rather than optimal dividend policies can result in a significant upward bias in the yield spread predicted by the model; (b) the size of this bias depends in a central way on the costs of equity issuance; (c) the marginal impact of strategic debt-service is substantial, in general, only for low equity-issuance costs, and (d) under optimally-determined dividends, strategic debt-service can actually result in a narrowing of yield spreads. In summary, our results indicate that endogenizing dividend policy and allowing for equity-issuance costs can enhance the model's content substantially, while ignoring these factors could introduce non-trivial biases into the valuation.

Deposit Insurance, Bank Incentives, and the Design of Regulatory Policy

This study analyzes alternative bank regulatory polices within a theoretical framework that can encompass many policy design issues. Consequences of generalizing banks' investment and financing opportunities for results in the existing literature are examined. Under costless equity issuance, a narrow banking requirement costlessly resolves moral hazard and insurance pricing problems addressed in the literature. With costly equity, minimum capital requirements can be effective but optimal policy design is complicated by its dependence on equity issuance costs, heterogeneous bank investment opportunities, and the information requirements these dependencies create. Incentive compatible policy mechanisms appear limited in their ability to resolve the information problems.

Deposit Insurance, Bank Incentives, and the Design of Regulatory Policy

This study analyzes alternative bank regulatory polices within a theoretical framework that can encompass many policy design issues. Consequences of generalizing banks' investment and financing opportunities for results in the existing literature are examined. Under costless equity issuance, a narrow banking requirement costlessly resolves moral hazard and insurance pricing problems addressed in the literature. With costly equity, minimum capital requirements can be effective but optimal policy design is complicated by its dependence on equity issuance costs, heterogenous bank investment opportunities, and the information requirements these dependencies create. Incentive compatible policy mechanisms appear limited in their ability to resolve the information problems.