We review the theory and evidence on IPO activity: why firms go public, why they reward first-day investors with considerable underpricing, and how IPOs perform in the long run. Our perspective is threefold: First, we believe that many IPO phenomena are not stationary. Second, we believe research into share allocation issues is the most promising area of research in IPOs at the moment. Third, we argue that asymmetric information is not the primary driver of many IPO phenomena. Instead, we believe future progress in the literature will come from nonrational and agency conf lict explanations. We describe some promising such alternatives. From 1980 to 2001, the number of companies going public in the United States exceeded one per business day. The number of initial public offerings ~IPOs! has varied from year to year, however, with some years seeing fewer than 100 IPOs, and others seeing more than 400. These IPOs raised $488 billion ~in 2001 dollars! in gross proceeds, an average of $78 million per deal. At the end of the first day of trading, their shares traded on average at 18.8 percent above the price at which the company sold them. For an investor buying shares at the first-day closing price and holding them for three years, IPOs returned 22.6 percent. Still, over three years, the average IPO underperformed the CRSP value-weighted market index by 23.4 percent and underperformed seasoned companies with the same market capitalization and book-to-market ratio by 5.1 percent. In a nutshell, these numbers summarize the patterns in issuing activity, underpricing, and long-run underperformance, which have been the focus of a large theoretical and empirical literature. We survey this literature, focusing on recent papers. Space constraints force us to take a U.S.-centric point of view and to omit a description of the institutional aspects of going public. The interested reader can consult Ellis, Michaely, and O’Hara ~2000!,

/pdf/a-review-of-ipo-activity-pricing-and-allocations-1a6z3hq7ug.pdf

A Review of IPO Activity, Pricing, and Allocations

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/99175/Hanlon_A%20review%20of%20tax%20research.pdf;sequence=1

A review of tax research

We review the theory and evidence on IPO activity: why firms go public, why they reward first-day investors with considerable underpricing, and how IPOs perform in the long run. Our perspective on the literature is three-fold: First, we believe that many IPO phenomena are not stationary. Second, we believe research into share allocation issues is the most promising area of research in IPOs at the moment. Third, we argue that asymmetric information is not the primary driver of many IPO phenomena. Instead, we believe future progress in the literature will come from non-rational and agency conflict explanations. We describe some promising such alternatives.

/pdf/a-review-of-ipo-activity-pricing-and-allocations-2mevvmaldb.pdf

A Review of IPO Activity, Pricing and Allocations

Stakeholder theory provides a framework for investigating the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance. This relationship is investigated by examining how change in CSP is related to change in financial accounting measures. The findings provide some support for a tenet in stakeholder theory which asserts that the dominant stakeholder group, shareholders, financially benefit when management meets the demands of multiple stakeholders. Specifically, change in CSP was positively associated with growth in sales for the current and subsequent year. This indicates that there are short-term benefits from improving CSP. Return on sales was significantly positively related to change in CSP for the third financial period, indicating that long-term financial benefits may exist when CSP is improved.

An empirical investigation of the relationship between change in corporate social performance and financial performance: A stakeholder theory perspective

An empirical assessment of the residual income valuation model

This text is divided into concise learning parts that cover both the why and how of accounting. The text introduces and develops a framework for business analysis and valuation using financial statement data.

Business Analysis and Valuation : Using Financial Statements

We analyse both initial underpricing and post-listing returns for Australian IPOs. Our results are consistent with the view that unique institutional characteristics may have overwhelmed previous Australian tests of equilibrium models of IPO underpricing. The results also show that Australian IPOs significantly underperform market movements in the three-year period subsequent to listing. Further investigation of these anomalous post-listing returns lead us to reject various ‘speculative bubble’ explanations. Rather, the evidence suggests a curvilinear relationship between initial and subsequent returns, although the economic significance of the relationship is low.

/pdf/australian-ipo-pricing-in-the-short-and-long-run-4inw16y843.pdf

Australian IPO pricing in the short and long run

https://www.sirca.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Audit-Quality-IPOs-JAPP-2003.pdf

The association between audit quality, accounting disclosures and firm-specific risk: Evidence from initial public offerings

Initial Public Offers (IPOs) made on the Stock Exchange of Singapore routinely provide sufficiently detailed data to allow reconstruction of both the application and allocation schedules. We show that large investors tend to preferentially request participation in IPOs with higher initial returns, consistent with these investors being better informed. We also show that inferences based exclusively on application strategies are quite different from those drawn on investor allocations. Our results suggest that caution is necessary in assessing the relative merit of competing explanations for IPO underpricing where the underlying demand is not identified.

/pdf/ipo-underpricing-explanations-implications-from-investor-3vgpn9vfso.pdf

IPO Underpricing Explanations: Implications from Investor Application and Allocation Schedules

Initial Public Offers (IPOs) made on the Stock Exchange of Singapore routinely provide sufflciently detailed data to allow reconstruction of both the application and allocation schedules. We show that large investors tend to preferentially request participation in IPOs with higher initial returns, consistent with these investors being better informed. We also show that inferences based exclusively on application strategies are quite different from those drawn on investor allocations. Our results suggest that caution is necessary in assessing the relative merit of competing explanations for IPO underpricing where the underlying

Philip J. Lee

Papers

Business Analysis and Valuation : Using Financial Statements

Australian IPO pricing in the short and long run

The association between audit quality, accounting disclosures and firm-specific risk: Evidence from initial public offerings

IPO Underpricing Explanations: Implications from Investor Application and Allocation Schedules

IPO Underpricing Explanations: Implications from Investor Application and Allocation