Initial Public Offering Characteristics Research Articles

The Impact of Financial Crises on IPO Underpricing in the Chinese Stock Market: A Comparative Analysis of the 2008 Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The capacity of enterprises to access finance is intrinsically linked to their long-term sustainability. The efficient allocation of financial resources across society increases the utilization of social assets. Initial public offerings (IPOs) represent a highly effective mechanism for generating capital to support the growth and development of firms. The paper thus examines the impact of financial crises, specifically the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, on IPO pricing in the Chinese stock market. In this paper, pre-crisis and post-crisis IPO data are analyzed to identify trends and changes in underpricing. Statistical methods are used to examine the relationship between market conditions, economic indicators and IPO characteristics. The results show that IPO underpricing decreased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis due to increased market caution and regulatory changes, while the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in market uncertainty and volatility, which led to an increase in underpricing. These insights are significant for investors, companies planning initial public offerings, and policymakers aiming to stabilize financial markets during economic downturns.

Do anti-takeover provisions restrain IPO underpricing? An analysis from the perspective of information asymmetry

PurposeBased on the textual-analyzed data covering 2148 IPO firms in China’s stock market during the 2007–2018 period, the authors’ purpose is to examine the influence of anti-takeover provision (ATP) adoption on initial public offerings (IPO) underpricing and identify the reducing effect of the former.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine the sample consisting of Chinese A-share listed IPO firms between 2007 and 2018 from China Stock Market Accounting Research and Chinese Research Data Services, with ATP data collected from the IPO firm chapters. Specifically, the authors use text analysis to identify whether there are ATPs in the IPO firm chapters, as well as the number of ATPs. H1: IPO underpricing is less severe for firms adopting ATPs. H2: The effect of ATP adoption on IPO underpricing is more salient for firms in worse information environments.FindingsThe authors examine the influence of ATP adoption on IPO underpricing and identify the reducing effect of the former. This effect can be explained by the fact that adopting ATPs in IPO firm chapters can reduce information asymmetry to a large extent by helping external investors obtain more private information, which alleviates IPO underpricing. The authors also find that the reducing effect is more significant in the worsened information environment. Furthermore, the authors explore the influence of adopting ATPs on other IPO characteristics and find positive effects on IPO over-subscription, funds raised and trading activity and negative effects on listing fees.Originality/valueThis study mainly contributes to the literature from the following two aspects. First, the study enriches the literature about the influencing factors of IPO underpricing. Second, the study also enriches the literature about the economic consequences of ATP adoption. This study also has important policy implications. With the coming of the era of decentralized ownership in China’s capital market, ATP adoption has become more important and attracted more attention. Also, investors focus more on pricing efficiency. The findings in this paper provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between ATP adoption and IPO underpricing.

Are Korea individual investors irrational in initial public offering (IPO) market? An explanation from the winner’s curse perspective

Individual investors are often regarded as irrational sentiment investors whose investment behaviour is affected by psychological factors. This study measures the actual investment return of individual investors who participated in initial price offering (IPO) stock investment in the Korean market from the short-term and long-term perspective and investigates the relationship with IPO characteristics that affect the investment sentiment of individual investors. Even though the underpricing of IPO stocks on the first day of listing on average reached 31% over the past 13 years, individual investors in the Korean stock market earned very little actual return on IPO stock investment. The market-adjusted return on IPO stock investment on the first day was about −0.5%, and even if they held IPO stocks for one year after listing, it was only 3.4%. The so-called winner’s curse, in which individual investors are allocated relatively many overvalued stocks appears to be present in the Korean IPO market. The allocation of IPO stocks by individual investors depends on several factors that reflect individual investors’ sentiment, such as past performance of previous IPOs, past industrial returns, institutional investors’ investment intent, offering size, an upward revision of the offer price, and issuing firm’s financial soundness. It was found that the higher the individual allocation rate, the lower the short-term investment return on the first trading day, confirming the winner’s curse risk of individual investors. However, in the long run, a reversal of returns was observed, in which the long-term returns of IPO stocks with high individual allocation rates rose. In order to mitigate the winner’s curse risk, it is desirable to reform IPO pricing mechanisms and allocation rules in a way that reduces the asymmetry of information between institutional and individual investors and reflects the subscription demand of individual investors.

Modeling and Estimation of Cumulative Abnormal Return using VECM

This paper examined how firm-level idiosyncratic risk varies over time. It affected initial public offering (IPO) in the presence of pump-and-dump and flipping trends during the early trading of IPO stocks in the Indonesia Stock Exchange. The paper used the IPO data taken from 181 companies during the year 2015-2019. It revisited the relationship between Cumulative Abnormal Return thirty-days (CAR30D) and Cumulative Abnormal Return five-days (CAR5D) and the Characteristics (IPO Floating shares, IPO Fund and Price) and Macroeconomics Condition (Inflation rate). It also used the cointegration analysis and VECM model. The paper found that Both LnFloat and LnPrice had causal evidence in the long-run causality or short-run with Cumulative Abnormal Return thirty days (CAR30D). We also noted that idiosyncratic risk exposure depends on IPO characteristics. It was crucial for firms going public in hot-issue markets, undervalued IPOs, and high idiosyncratic-risk issues. The model suggested that those series should cointegrate firstly. However, the variable of LnIPOFund had causal evidence in the short-run causality only.

REITs and REOCs and their initial stock market performance: a European perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the differences between initial public offering (IPO) pricing in the real estate sector and to provide insight into how real estate investment trust (REIT) and real estate operating company (REOC) IPOs perform in a comparative framework.Design/methodology/approachThe sample consists of 107 European REIT and REOC IPOs from nine European countries over the period 2000-2015. The initial returns are examined by creating subsamples based on the two business forms, countries and specific timeframes (before, during and after the global financial crisis). A multiple regression analysis is applied to identify theex-anteuncertainty factors, IPO and firm characteristics, which may impact on the different underpricing levels of REITs and REOCs.FindingsEuropean property companies are on average significantly underpriced by 4.63 per cent. The results also reveal that REITs provide a significantly lower underpricing of 2.02 per cent than REOCs, with a positive initial return of 5.69 per cent. The causal treatment effect of the legal form of the company and the underpricing is confirmed by propensity score matching. Among the most influential factors for a lower REIT underpricing, besides the REIT-status itself, are the volatility, offer size and market phase of the IPO. During the global financial crisis (GFC) (2008-2010), underpricing exceeds the initial return for the total sample by approximately 70 per cent.Originality/valueThis is the first study investigating differences in the underpricing level of REITs and REOCs in a European setting, including the GFC as an extraordinary market phase. The authors provide evidence that REIT IPOs compared to REOC IPOs “leave less money on the table”.

Does corporate governance affect the valuation of Spanish IPOs? The role of ownership structure and the board of directors

ABSTRACTWe analyse the influence of the board of directors and ownership structure on the valuation of initial public offering (IPOs) in the Spanish capital market during the period 1998–2013. After controlling for other influences such as the auditor’s reputation, the underwriter’s reputation and the level of information asymmetry, our results lend strong support for the hypothesis of the influence exerted by ownership concentration over the level of IPO underpricing. Moreover, we find a nonlinear relationship between the proportion of shares in the IPO belonging to members of the board of directors and the level of underpricing. Other IPO and firm characteristics such as the size of the offer and its structure also prove to be statistically significant. Finally, we find that the market cycle influences the valuation of IPOs, as the relationship between the market return and the initial IPO return is positive and statistically significant.

Urban Economic Openness and IPO Underpricing

This paper represents a first attempt to employ a macroeconomic approach to explain the high and varying IPO underpricing within a single emerging market. We examine the empirical impact of trade openness on the short-run underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) using city-level data. Particularly, we argue that urban economic openness (UEO) has a significant impact on the productivity and on prices of both direct and indirect real estate due to productivity gains of companies in more open areas. This in turn positively affects the firm’s profitability, enhancing the confidence in local real estate markets and future company performance, hence decreasing the uncertainty of the IPO valuation. As a result, issuers have less incentive to underprice IPO shares. We use a sample of Chinese real estate IPOs, which offer a suitable laboratory thanks to their strong geographic investment patterns focused locally and a country with a highly heterogeneous openness across regions. Controlling for traditional firm- and issuing-specific characteristics of IPOs that are used for developed markets and Chinese-related features (i.e. listing location and state ownership), we find the evidence that companies investing in economically more open areas experience less IPO underpricing. Our results show great explanatory power and are robust to different specifications.

IPO characteristics and underprincing in the Alternative Investment Market

ABSTRACTThis study contributes to broadening knowledge concerning the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) in second markets. In particular, we analyse the price formation process of IPOs on the first trading day for a sample of 567 IPOs placed in the London’s Alternative Investment Market. Our findings, after stating that underpricing is significantly positive, show that price variation, observed through the underpricing variable, is related to several offer-specific characteristics, such as subscription proportion, offering price and share adjustment. Underpricing is also related to several control variables (offering size, previous IPO number and previous market return).

Underwriter networks, investor attention, and initial public offerings

Using various centrality measures from social network analysis, we analyze how the location of a lead initial public offering (IPO) underwriter in its network of investment banks affects various IPO characteristics. We hypothesize that investment banking networks allow lead IPO underwriters to induce institutions to pay attention to the firms they take public and to perform two information-related roles during the IPO process: an information dissemination role, in which the lead underwriter uses its investment banking network to disseminate noisy information about various aspects of the IPO firm to institutional investors; and an information extraction role, in which the lead underwriter uses its investment banking network to extract information useful in pricing the IPO firm equity from institutional investors. Based on these two roles, we develop testable hypotheses relating lead IPO underwriter centrality to the IPO characteristics of firms they take public. We find that more central lead IPO underwriters are associated with larger absolute values of offer price revisions, greater IPO and after-market valuations, larger IPO initial returns, greater institutional investor equity holdings and analyst coverage immediately post-IPO, greater stock liquidity post-IPO, and better long-run stock returns. Using a hand-collected data set of pre-IPO media coverage as a proxy for investor attention, we show that an important channel through which more central lead IPO underwriters achieve favorable IPO characteristics is by attracting greater investor attention to the IPOs underwritten by them.

External Determinants of Going Public in the Czech Republic and in Poland

This study deals with Initial Public Offering (IPO) developments in the Czech Republic and Poland over the period 2000 – 2012 and aims to indicate the influence of external going public determinants, in particular the capital market size- and liquidity- indicators, on IPO numbers and values. Our sample includes enterprises that conducted an IPO on the main markets of the Prague and Warsaw Stock Exchanges. The following steps were undertaken to analyse the quantitative data. Firstly, we performed a quantitative analysis of the Czech and Polish capital market in order to draw attention to certain specific issues existing on these markets between 2000 and 2012. Next, we compared internal IPO characteristics on the particular capital markets with the empirical evidence on IPOs in the Central and Eastern Europe- and EU-wide capital markets. Our results indicate the favourable development of fundamental capital market indicators on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. This could be seen as a signal of increasing market attractiveness for both investors and potential issuers (IPO candidates) and thereby accelerate IPO activity. On the other hand, the size and liquidity of the Czech capital market still represents an investment barrier.

Post–Initial Public Offering Operating Performance and Its Determinants: Initial Public Offering Characteristics and Corporate Governance Practices

We examine the post–initial public offering (IPO) operating performance of firms going public in Borsa Istanbul. Covering the period 2007–13 and 102 IPO firms, we find that operating performance indicators except cash flows from operations over total assets decline following the IPOs relative to the pre-IPO year, confirming the previous research, albeit to a lesser extent than in the previous studies. We document that number of intermediaries and intermediation type act as determinants of post-IPO performance measures. We also find evidence suggesting the role of firm-specific corporate governance practices in the post-IPO operating performance.

Can Venture Capitalists Tame the Wolves? An Analysis of Fraudulent Underwriters, IPO Characteristics, and VC Certification

A recent hit movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, highlighted the fraudulent activity of the investment bank Stratton Oakmont. Unfortunately, this was not the only such financial firm convicted of illegal behavior during the 1990s; there were at least 34 Initial Public Offering (IPO) underwriters that were the subject of SEC enforcement during this period. I examine the characteristics of IPOs underwritten by these investment banks, particularly as they compare to other IPOs. I find that IPOs underwritten by sanctioned investment banks (particularly those that were less active in the IPO market) were significantly different with respect to both firm and offer characteristics, including having higher underpricing and worse long-term performance. Further, such IPOs, while less likely to be backed by a venture capitalist, were positively impacted by this third-party relationship, in that underpricing was lower and long-term return was higher; this is likely due, at least in part, to the certification role provided by venture capitalists.

ANALÝZA HLAVNÍCH CHARAKTERISTIK "INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING" V ČESKÉ REPUBLICE A PERSPEKTIVY JEJICH DALŠÍHO VÝVOJE

Funding development of the company through the “Initial Public Offering” has a high representation globally, the Czech Republic unlike, and belongs to traditional methods of raising funds necessary for development of business in the developed capital markets. In the United States of America, Japan and in the Western Europe countries the method of company funding through IPO has been applying for several decades already. The first public stock offerings began to be applied in these markets in higher volumes from the beginning of the 60th of the last century. From that period importance of IPO goes up globally and the initial public stock offerings begin to be applied more and more even in the Central and Eastern European countries. Since 2004, several companies that have opted for this form of financing can be found in the Czech Republic as well. The objective of the paper is to analyze the main characteristics of initial public offerings of shares effected on the Czech capital market between 2004 and 2008 and to outline the perspectives of further development in this area.

Offer price, target ownership structure and post-listing liquidity of newly listed firms

Purpose – Initial public offerings (IPOs) underpricing is a world-wide phenomenon in the stock market. It is generally explained with asymmetric information and risk. The purpose of this paper is to complement these traditional explanations with a theory where investors also worry about the after-market illiquidity that may result from asymmetric information after the IPO. Design/methodology/approach – The model blends such liquidity concerns with adverse selection and risk as motives for underpricing and liquidity. The model's predictions are supported by evidence for 798 French IPOs realized between 1995 and 2008. Using various measures of liquidity, the author finds that expected after-market liquidity and liquidity risk are important determinants of IPO underpricing. Findings – The author finds evidence that less liquid the aftermarket is expected to be, and the less predictable its liquidity, the larger will be the IPO underpricing. Practical implications – The study provides empirical evidence that shares outstanding and author IPO characteristics play a vital role on post-IPO liquidity. According to the results obtained, three IPO characteristics, that is, relative size, blockholder and underpricing of offering have an explanatory for the liquidity and trading activity of the shares outstanding. It should be noted that this explanatory power is much greater before isolating the market effect. Nevertheless, given the evidence to show that these operations are executed during upmarket periods when trading volume is high, the non-exclusion of the market effect may attribute these variables with more explanatory power than they actually possess. Be that as it may, even after eliminating the market effect, their explanatory capacity is still considerable. Originality/value – The author has found that underpricing is negatively related to the breadth of shareholders but positively related to institutional shareholders after the IPO. When a company is underpriced, it is likely, on average, to have a higher breadth of shareholder base and lower concentration of large outside investors.

Do IPOs Performance Signal Future Stock Issuance

This paper examines empirically the effect of initial public offering (IPO) issuance on seasoned equity offering (SEO) decisions and incentives. The evidence from China indicates that specific IPO characteristics, including corporate governance issues, determine the size and timing of an SEO. The magnitude of the influence of the IPO on a subsequent SEO is sensitive to the amount of time between these events. We find that companies with higher growth perspectives and a high debt ratio are likely to conduct an SEO within the first year following the IPO. Further, our findings suggest that state ownership is associated with strong SEO activity.

The strategic reallocation of IPO shares

In this work, we study the reallocation of shares to retail and institutional investors, measured as the difference between the allocation declared before the initial public offering (IPO) and the effective allotment decided by the underwriter after the bookbuilding process. The reallocation is disaggregated into three components, two of which are under the direct control of the underwriter: the initial allocation, and the demand satisfaction ratio. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 193 hybrid IPOs issued in Italy between 1997 and 2012. Controlling for firm and IPO characteristics, we find that the IPO shares are typically shifted toward institutional investors when positive information is collected during the bookbuilding process. The IPO pricing and share reallocation are found to be interdependent, and reallocation is used in combination with partial adjustment to reward institutional investors.

IPO characteristics of index firms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the initial public offerings (IPOs) of the firms that are eventually included in one of the S&P 400, the S&P 500, or the S&P 600 Indices. Do these firms have very different IPO features than the rest of the IPOs?Design/methodology/approachThe control sample is formed of IPOs that are not included in the corresponding index, and the IPOs that end up in each S&P index are compared to this control sample. Logistic regressions are utilized to estimate the odds of inclusion into one of these indices.FindingsThe author finds that the IPO features, such as underpricing, offer price, underwriter's reputation, venture capital presence, and so on, are found to be substantially different for the index samples. The index firms are found to be “superstars” that deliver extremely high long‐run returns between their IPO date and their index inclusion date. The above results suggest that the quality of index firms has a persistent component to it that can be detected even during the IPO process. After estimating the determinants of the index inclusion, the author discovers that factors implying lower asymmetric information about firm's business (such as, the firm being a spinoff, or being certified by a venture capitalist or a prestigious underwriter, etc.) increase its odds of inclusion.Originality/valueThe paper proposes and tests two new hypotheses related to inclusion into an S&P index. Discoveries made in this paper can help someone recognize which IPOs could become “superstars” that end up in an S&P index.

Geographic distance and corporate acquisitions: signals from IPO firms

AbstractThis paper examines acquisitions of firms after they have undergone initial public offerings (IPOs). Combining insights from information economics with recent research on geographic distance in various market settings, the analysis investigates whether the presence or absence of different signals on IPO firms has an impact on the geographic proximity of acquirers. The central proposition we develop and test is that specific characteristics of IPOs—venture capitalist backing, investment bank reputation, and underpricing of issued shares—convey signals on these firms, which can facilitate acquisitions by more remote acquirers who are more likely to face the risk of adverse selection. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Influence of IPO characteristics on liquidity

ABSTRACTThis study examines the relationship between the characteristics that define initial public offerings (IPOs) and the post-offering liquidity of stocks outstanding. We argue that higher under-pricing, relative size and retail composition of the offerings will result in higher post-listing liquidity. Based on a sample of Spanish IPOs, our results reveal that liquidity can be explained by a set of IPO characteristics. Furthermore, the results remain robust after removing the market effect and adding other IPO characteristics, such as stabilization agreements, lockup restrictions and the reputation of underwriters, insurers and auditors.

Geographic Distance and Corporate Acquisitions: Signals from IPO Firms

This paper examines acquisitions of firms after they have undergone initial public offerings (IPOs). Combining insights from information economics with recent research on geographic distance in various market settings, the analysis investigates whether the presence or absence of different signals on IPO firms has an impact on the geographic proximity of acquirers. The central proposition we develop and test is that specific characteristics of IPOs – venture capitalist backing, investment bank reputation, and underpricing of issued shares – convey signals on these firms, which can facilitate acquisitions by more remote acquirers who are more likely to face the risk of adverse selection.