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This study aims to outline the research field of initial public offerings (IPOs) pricing and performance by combining bibliometric analysis with a systematic literature review process.

The study uses over three decades of IPO publication records (1989–2020) from Scopus and Web of Science databases. An analysis of keyword co-occurrence and bibliometric coupling was used to gain insights into the evolution of IPO literature.

The study categorized the IPO research field into four primary clusters: IPO pricing and short-run behaviour, IPO performance and influence of intermediaries, venture capital financing and top management and political affiliations and litigation risks. The results offer a framework for delineating research advancements at different stages of IPOs and illustrate the growing interest of researchers in IPOs in recent years. The study identified future research potential in the areas of corporate governance, earning management and investor sentiments related to IPO performance. Similarly, the study highlighted the opportunity to test multiple theoretical frameworks on alternative investment platforms (SME IPO platforms) operating under distinct regulatory environments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper represents the first instance of using both bibliometric and systematic review to quantitatively and qualitatively review the articles published in the area of IPO pricing and performance from 1989 to 2020.

Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a major milestone for a company. It allows a private company to issue shares to a much broader group of investors and become public. But conclusive evidence of the driving forces behind investors’ demand is yet to be identified. Therefore, the major purpose of this study is to assess the level of investors’ demand in IPO and how investors’ demand in IPOs is affected.

The study will employ 80 IPO companies of a Muslim-majority country, Bangladesh, starting from 2013 to 2021 with application of linear and quantile regressions. Apart from that, t-test will be used to compare means of groups of Shariah-compliant and non-Shariah-compliant firms and IPOs under fixed-price and book-building mechanism.

Oversubscription is higher for IPOs issued through fixed-price method compared to book-building method, but no significant difference is found in oversubscription for Shariah firms compared to non-Shariah firms based on t-tests. The authors found IPO size, firm size, IPO risk, proportion of shares offered to public, and bank interest rate to have significant impact on the IPO demand. Some models found non-Shariah compliance status of IPO companies to be a significant factor for the investors to demand IPO. Quantile regression results found board independence to have a positive association with larger, less-subscribed firms and board size to have a negative relation with IPO demand, for smaller firms with high demand.

Future studies may apply the findings to other settings, especially into the reasons behind preference for non-Shariah-compliant firms and higher demand for IPOs during higher interest rate. Equity issuing firms and issue managers can benefit from this study by wisely deciding on the proportion of shares for public, issue size and board of director composition. Shariah considerations cannot be ignored given that more information on Shariah compliance is disseminated among investors despite current non-preference for Shariah-compliant IPOs. On the other hand, institutional investors and general investors should consider firm-specific, governance and macroeconomic factors in IPO investment. Likewise, regulators would do well to bring in quality IPOs with characteristics mentioned in this study for ensuring stability of the market.

The main contribution of the study is identifying determinants of IPO demand: faith, governance, macro issues – understanding whether one or many of the above factors drive investor demand in IPOs of a Muslim-majority country will be the main contribution.

This study aims to examine the potential of Sharia status as ex ante information to signal the quality of an issuing firm by improving the decision-making process of potential investors when assessing initial public offerings (IPOs) in an environment where information asymmetry is pronounced. Potential investors face challenges in evaluating and determining the true value of IPO issues, which inherently influences their decision-making. Consequently, this results in pronounced price fluctuations in IPO shares, leading to higher underpricing.

This study uses a sample of 350 IPOs listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) between 2004 and 2021 to examine the signaling role of Sharia-compliance status. A three-model approach is used to ensure that the study's objectives are met. The first model investigates the effect of Sharia status on underpricing to determine whether the main beneficiary of such a signal is the investor or the issuer. The second model examines the effect of Sharia status on investor demand to determine if such a signal influences prospective investors' investment decision-making processes. The third model inspects the effect of Sharia status on investor divergence of beliefs to measure the signal's ability to reduce information asymmetry within the Malaysian IPO market.

The Malaysian IPO market relies heavily on the fixed-price mechanism, which exacerbates high information asymmetry, affecting potential investors' behavior, asset price formation and return generation on the first day of listing. The study results indicate that Sharia status does not have any signaling role in the Malaysian IPO market. This is because investors in the Malaysian market are driven by ex ante information that helps unveil relevant information that leads to capital gains. Furthermore, most new issues in the Malaysian IPO market fall under Sharia status, diluting the relevance of such information for prospective investors in determining profitable investments.

The findings highlight the challenges faced by issuing firms in estimating market demand due to limited premarket insights and the difficulties prospective investors face in identifying the quality of issuing firms. Efforts to provide more information on investor demand can reduce uncertainty and facilitate more informed decision-making.

This research stands as one of the pioneering efforts to provide an empirical explanation of the potential signaling influence of Sharia status in an emerging IPO market.

We examine the association between conditional conservatism in initial public offering (IPO) underpricing and post-issue stock market survival in the U.S.

We adopt an archival approach by collecting data for 1,761 U.S. IPO issuers for the period 1990–2017. Regression analyses are conducted to evaluate the association between conditional conservatism in initial public offerings with underpricing and post-issue stock market survival. We identify firms that went public in the period 1990–2012. These firms are then followed for five years after the IPO to assess their stock market survival.

We find that pre-issue conditional conservatism is significantly associated with less IPO underpricing. We also detect that IPO firms with higher levels of conditional conservative reporting are more likely to survive in the post-IPO stock market in the three-, four-, and five-year periods after the IPO. Our main findings are robust after controlling for other factors in our models, such as IPO cycles, venture capitalists, research and development investment, and pre-IPO accounting performance.

We extend research by demonstrating that conditional conservative reporting practices help firms reduce their indirect costs of raising their initial public capital. Additionally, our research introduces new evidence on the association between pre-IPO conditional conservatism and after-issue stock market survival. Our findings empirically support the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) decision to reintroduce the concept of prudence into the conceptual framework, by showing how conservative reporting can reduce information asymmetry in IPO firms.

Empirical examinations of initial public offering (IPO) initial returns often rely heavily on linear regression models. However, these models can prove inefficient owing to their susceptibility to outliers, a common occurrence in IPO data. This study introduces a machine learning method, known as random forest, to address issues that linear regression may struggle to resolve.

The study’s sample comprises 352 fixed-priced IPOs from the year 2004 until 2021. A unique aspect of this research is its application of the random forest method. The accuracy of random forest in comparison to other methods is evaluated. The findings indicate that the random forest model significantly outperforms other methods in all of the evaluated aspects.

The variable importance measure indicates that investors’ demand, divergence of opinion among investors and offer price are the most crucial predictors of IPO initial returns. These determinants hold particular significance due to the widespread use of the fixed-price method in Malaysia, as this method amplifies the information asymmetry in the IPO market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the pioneering works in Malaysian literature to apply the random forest method to address the constraints of conventional linear regression models. This is achieved by considering a more extensive array of factors and acknowledging the influence of outliers. Additionally, this study adds value to Malaysian literature by ranking and identifying the ex-ante information that best signals the issuing firm’s quality. This contribution facilitates prospective investors’ decision-making processes and provides issuing firms with effective means to communicate their value and quality to the IPO market.

The present study aims to identify how firms positioned their corporate reputation (i.e. impressiveness vs respectability) in their initial public offering (IPO) communication based on the impression formation model. Further, the study examined whether this presentation of corporate reputation was related to IPO success (i.e. stock price and volume of trading).

The present study analyzed 248 IPO prospectuses that were submitted to the major US stock markets. Specifically, various substantive and symbolic information and cues in IPO prospectuses were content analyzed.

The results suggest that bigger (in terms of revenue) IPO companies featured more “impressiveness” in their IPO prospectus, leading to greater IPO success. Bigger (in terms of both revenue and number of employees) IPO companies featured more “respectability” impressions in the IPO prospectus, although they did not achieve direct IPO success on the first day of IPO. Different types of industry used different information cues to feature “impressiveness” and/or “respectability,” suggesting that different types of firms view different cues to be important to IPO communication.

The results also suggest some practical guidelines for the strategic use of contents, tables and illustrations. Using more charts, tables and illustrations in IPO prospectus summaries was associated with a higher volume of trading on the first day. The more illustrations included in the IPO prospectus summaries, the less investors were willing to pay for initial stock prices.

IPO communication is a generally understudied area in corporate communication and strategic communication scholarship. The results should help to explain which communicative aspects and PR strategies effectively manage the firm’s impression to maximize the chances of an IPO success as well as initially build the financial reputation of a company. By doing so, the findings contribute to the broader advancement of financial communication within the strategic communications domain.

A critical factor to the success of IPOs is investor demand, which can be observed from the IPO subscription pattern. Therefore, the objective of this study is to review the studies on the demand of IPOs, including empirical and theoretical literature, due to the substantial growth of IPOs over the last two decades.

This study extracted secondary data regarding IPO demand published from 1988 to 2022 from the Scopus database. We conducted a meta-literature review for qualitative and quantitative methods on the resulting 284 articles using citation analysis (Harzing’s Publish or Perish and VOS viewer software) and content analysis.

The findings revealed significant elements of the literature, including countries, institutions, journals, authors, articles and topics. Based on the IPO literature review and analyses, this paper developed future research questions to facilitate an extension of the research. Additionally, this paper developed a dual perspective of the present state of IPO research. First, it asserts that the demand for IPOs is not limited to certain countries, jurisdictions or vintages. Second, there are very few studies on demand for IPOs available despite IPOs’ economic worth.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to present an empirical evaluation of demand for IPOs using inclusive mapping.

This study aims to examine the impact of disclosure on the unsolved initial public offering (IPO) puzzle. For this purpose, the authors analyzed the impact of the primary uses of the proceeds disclosed in a firm's IPO prospectus on underpricing, prelisting performance, postlisting underperformance and operating performance.

This study uses Indian public firms that went public between March 31, 2010, and March 31, 2020. A multivariate regression technique was used to study the impact of the primary uses of proceeds on underpricing, prelisting performance and postlisting underperformance, whereas a quantile regression technique was used to study their impact on operating performance.

The authors found that the primary use of proceeds disclosure helps predict underpricing and returns to the investor only until day 60 postlisting; beyond that, they provide no further insights into the firm's performance. Firms with lower and average operating performance should not state the general corporate purposes and payment on borrowings, respectively, as their primary use of proceeds, as it leads to a decline in their operating performance.

Results might suffer from the potential endogeneity problem due to selection bias. This research focuses on India only, which makes generalization of results for other economies difficult. Future research may extend the post-IPO period and include more developing economies. Furthermore, future studies can draw comparisons between developed and developing nations' disclosures of using proceeds.

This study will help the firms going public in India better disclose the use of proceeds based on their characteristics. Stating future acquisitions, payments on borrowings and working capital reduces the uncertainty, and therefore, these are feasible avenues for investing proceeds raised through IPO.

The authors used ten categories for the primary use of proceeds disclosure, whereas previous studies have used only five to six categories. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was the first to use underpricing, postlisting performance and operating performance in a single study. These measures gave a more holistic view of the use of proceeds disclosure.

This study aims to explore the motives behind the company’s decision to go public in Sri Lanka.

This study adopts the explanatory sequential mixed-method approach based on the benefit-cost trade-off theory, incorporating survey-based descriptive statistics of 143 respondents from listed companies in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) followed by content analysis of 52 initial public offering prospectuses and 11 interviews with top management of listed companies.

Companies primarily go public to raise capital for long- and short-term growth, followed by enhancing corporate image and governance structure. Also, they go public to rebalance capital structure, lower the cost of capital, diversify risk, compete in their product market and grab market timing opportunities. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis established that companies are going public also for value addition, broadening the ownership structure, establishing new strategic partnerships and funding for working capital requirements, which are not highlighted in previous studies.

These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers aiming to attract new companies to CSE, which would contribute to the capital market development of Sri Lanka.

This study combines quantitative survey and qualitative content analysis in a single investigation, revealing novel motives for going public that were not previously identified. This approach allows for a more comprehensive topic exploration, including the participants’ experiences and perceptions, while minimizing bias and maximizing robustness. This study is more comprehensive than previous studies that relied on descriptive statistics.

The purpose of this study is to extend the Fraud Diamond Theory to celebrity Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) and investigate their post-Initial Public Offering (IPO) stock market performance.

After obtaining a sample of celebrity SPACs from the Spacresearch.com database, fraud risk characteristics were obtained from Lexis Nexus searches. Buy and hold abnormal returns were calculated for celebrity SPACs versus a small-cap equity benchmark for time intervals after IPO, and multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between fraud risk features and post-IPO returns.

Celebrity SPACs exhibit Fraud Diamond characteristics and significantly underperform a small-cap stock portfolio on a risk-adjusted basis after IPO.

This study only examines celebrity SPACs that conducted IPOs on the NYSE and NASDAQ/AMEX and does not include those that are traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB).

Celebrity endorsement of SPAC vehicles attracts investors who may not be properly informed regarding the risk characteristics of SPACs. Accordingly, investors should be warned that celebrity SPACs underperform a small-cap equity portfolio and exhibit significant elements of fraud risk.

The use of celebrity endorsement as a marketing device to attract investment in SPACs has regulatory implications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine the fraud risk characteristics and post-IPO performance of celebrity SPACs.