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According to the market timing theory, firms try to take advantage of windows of opportunity to raise capital by exploiting temporary cost fluctuations of alternative financing sources. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to examine the influence and persistence of market timing in the financing decisions of Brazilian firms that launched IPOs in the period from 2001 to 2011.

We analyze the influence of past market values on the capital structure of these firms, based on the main models proposed by Baker and Wurgler (2002), adapted to reflect the characteristics of Brazilian firms’ financial statements.

We find evidence of market timing, but this behavior is not sufficiently persistent in the period studied to the point of determining these firms’ capital structure. We believe the fact that Brazilian companies rarely carried out follow-on primary equity issues after floating their capital in the period analyzed, due to the presence of more advantageous financing sources (particularly from the national development bank, BNDES), explains the results. Therefore, Brazilian firms appear to be pay heed to different funding sources, in search of windows of opportunity, to guide their financing decisions and determine their capital structures.

The Brazilian capital market has been developing intensely in recent years, making it increasingly relevant to analyze the financing and investment decisions of the country’s listed companies. The Brazilian literature on capital structure is extensive, but few works have addressed the issue of market timing.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate the impacts of equity market timing on corporate capital structure policies in Indonesia by apply Baker and Wurgler’s analytical approach to firms in Indonesia to see, first, if that approach applies to Indonesian firms and, second, if it can be generalized to other emerging markets.

This study will focus on capital structure policies based on Market Timing Theory in developing countries, which uses the panel data of companies listed in Indonesian Stock Exchange after IPO. The companies used as research object are 70 firms in the non-financial/non-banking sector with the observation period of 2000–2015. The period of measurement is five years after IPO. Using a past market value in which equity market timing is measured in two-time measurements, i.e. yearly timing and long-term timing to prove its persistence.

Consistent with equity market timing theory, the results suggest that firms tend to issue equities when their market valuations are relatively higher than their book values and their past market values are high. As a consequence, the firms become underleveraged or have their debts reduced in the short run. The results of long-term measurement on equity market timing do not appear to affect the firms’ capital structure decisions due to the firms’ relatively quick adjustments of optimal capital structures. The conclusion is that equity market timing is an important element in the short run but not in the long run.

The results of this study describe how firms in Indonesia take advantage of temporary market share fluctuations through equity market timing in their capital structure policies before ultimately making adjustments to the directions they are targeting.

The use of equity market timing is more aimed at reducing the debt ratio and avoiding unfavorable conditions in the debt market, as well as taking advantage of the capital gains derived from the differences in their stock prices. This study also has practical implications on investment policies that need to consider the adaptation factor of the industrial environment when it comes to making capital structure decisions, including how the entity must take policy when uncertain economic conditions.

Through the research behavior of capital structure more in-depth decision is expected to provide an overview for investors widely in determining investment policy. Thus, the investment strategy is more planned and can also anticipate unexpected conditions.

This research is the first study to analyze and to evaluate the impacts of equity market timing on corporate capital structure policies on post-IPO firms in Indonesia. This research is an empirical study that investigates the relevance of equity market timing considerations in the determination of debt-equity choices in the capital structure, included in the conditions of the global financial crisis.

We are the first to investigate the relationship between seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) and anchoring on historical high prices in China.

We use the ratio of the recent closing price to its historical high in the previous 12–60 months (anchoring-high-price ratio) to study its impact on the market timing of SEOs.

Empirical results show that the anchoring-high-price ratio significantly and positively affects the probability of additional stock issuances. Contrary to the USA market, the Chinese stock market reacts negatively to the SEOs at historical highs. Moreover, the anchoring-high-price ratio exacerbates the negative effect of announcements and leads to long-term underperformance. Finally, we investigate the impact of the anchoring-high-price ratio on a company’s capital structure, showing that the additional issuance anchoring on historical highs reduces the company’s leverage ratio in the long run. Overall, our findings support the anchoring theory and can help understand better the anchoring behavior of managers and the company’s decision on additional stock issuances.

We are the first to use the anchoring-high-price ratio to study the timing of SEOs. We find that the anchoring-high-price ratio positively affects the probability of SEOs. Unlike the USA, the Chinese stock market reacts negatively to SEOs at high prices. SEOs anchoring on historical highs reduce a firm’s leverage ratio in the long run. Finally, our results support the anchoring theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of market timing and pseudo market timing on equity issuance decisions of IPOs in an emerging economy – India. Indian new issues market provides a perfect setting to test market timing against pseudo market timing due to two reasons. First, the US literature shows that most underpriced IPOs are highly overvalued and in India, the authors have the evidence of underpricing of IPOs. But whether Indian IPOs are overvalued or not it is yet to be tested. Second, majority of IPOs were issued in India only after the 1991 economic reforms which may signal the evidence for pseudo market timing hypothesis.

The authors use direct test to examine the impact of market timing and pseudo market timing variables on the IPO activity. The direct tests of market timing and pseudo market timing hypotheses are based on the positive relation of market timing variables and market conditions variables with IPO activity. The authors examine the long-run performance of IPOs by using the calendar-time regression approach to test market timing against pseudo market timing. This serves as indirect test of market timing and pseudo market timing. Evidence of market timing using indirect test shows that there is a decline in the long-run stock performance of IPOs.

The results show that in India, firms issue equity not just due to market conditions but they also issue equity in order to time the market. The results of market timing are also supported by the calendar-time approach results. However, the authors find that the evidence of market timing is stronger for hot issue markets as compared to cold issue markets.

This is the first study to comprehensively examine market timing and pseudo market timing using direct and indirect tests for an emerging market context.

This study aims to investigate how the timing behavior affects the capital structure decisions of South Asian family firms. A strand of literature is available based on the capital structure of firms in general but inconsistent with family businesses framework and not from market timing outlook. This study looks at the issues from the market timing perspectives of both equity and debt market timing.

The sample of the study is the listed family firms of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The firm-level data are collected from Thomson Reuters' DataStream and the ownership data collected from the countries' stock exchanges and financial statements of the family firms.

The results show that there is strong support for the market timing in the family firms' capital structure. Moreover, the financial crisis of 2007–2009 surprisingly had a positive effect on the capital structure of South Asian family business.

This study looks at the issues from the market timing perspectives of both equity and debt market timing. It provides evidence for supporting the equity and debt market timing effect on the capital structure and financing decision of family firms. It also addresses the impact of the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the capital structure of family firms.

This study aims to examine the behavior of cash raised through market timing efforts and the success of such efforts in creating value to shareholders.

It is shown that in two quarters, subsequent to raising equity, cash balance of market timers is higher but after that, there is no significant difference between timers and non-timers. Results of speed of adjustment regressions indicate that market timers move faster toward their target cash levels.

Market timers are small firms that suffer from asymmetric information. They have limited access to capital market, and raising external capital is an opportunity that should be timed. The results suggest that, on average, these firms are managed by more able executives, who are 10 per cent more likely to time the market; however, it is found that timing efforts are unsuccessful in creating value to shareholders even after controlling for the mitigating effect of managerial ability. Subsequent to market timing, on average, market timers earn significantly lower abnormal return over different holding periods relative to their comparable non-timer counterparts.

Overall, the results undermine the validity of market timing as a value-maximizing financial policy.

This paper aims to examine the effects of lines of credit on a firm’s market timing behavior and the pricing of its seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). It shows that firms with lines of credit are more likely to time the equity market and receive less underpricing for their SEOs. It also shows that the propensity of firms with lines of credit to time the market is particularly significant for financially unconstrained firms. The results are robust to different measures of market timing and financial constraint, and these fill the gap in the literature that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, has not examined the relation between lines of credit, market timing and value creation as related to equity offerings.

The paper first investigates the relationship between lines of credit and the probability of a firm issuing SEOs using a logistic model. The paper then investigates whether firms with lines of credit engage in market timing behavior using ordinary least square regressions with two-way cluster-robust standard errors (standard errors that are robust to simultaneous correlation along two dimensions, such as firms and time) with two measures of market timing and two measures for financial constraints. Finally, the paper examines the relationship between lines of credit and SEO underpricing.

It was found that firms with lines of credit are more likely to time the equity market, perhaps driven by the financing flexibility resulting from the existence of their lines of credit. This finding comes mainly from financially unconstrained firms, as such an effect is not observed among financially constrained firms with lines of credit. It is further shown that firms with lines of credit are more likely to experience less severe equity underpricing, perhaps owing to market timing behavior. The results provide evidence on how lines of credit may create value to a firm through its market timing.

The paper sheds new light on how lines of credit may create value to a firm through the market timing channel.

The purpose of this study is to explore at what stage of a company’s life cycle the theory of market timing has explained debt. Drawing on a unified conceptual framework of market timing theory, the authors scrutinize the impact of life cycle and ownership structure on the market condition.

Based on a sample of 24 Tunisian companies listed on the stock exchange and 100 French firms listed on the CAC All-Tradable on a 10-year period, this paper grounded the market timing theory and attempted to clear the relation between ownership structure, life cycle of the firm and market timing theory by statistical analysis.

The findings of panel data modeling indicate that when the life cycle was used as an explanatory variable, it was found that the variable reflecting the market timing is not significant in either context; it means that no significant support is found in the theory of market timing in both countries. Whereas when the life cycle was used as a dummy variable, it was found that the life cycle has an impact on debt only in the Tunisian context.

This study has several important implications for researchers and practitioners. The findings reported here clarify the strength of the impact of life cycle on the market timing, when it explains the debt in the two contexts and the impact of ownership structure such as the managerial ownership and concentration of capital on debt.

This study contributes to examine the theory of debt in different phases of life cycle. Focused on the case of Tunisian and French firms, this study is unique and valuable.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of equity market misvaluation on manager behavior. Using a sample of 535 French-listed over 2000–2018, the authors analyze whether corporate investment decision is sensitive to equity market overvaluation.

The study adopts market-to-book (M/B) decomposition developed by Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan (2004, RKV) that proxies for market misvaluation at the firm and industry levels. The authors conducted a long-term performance analysis via a portfolio sorting procedure and a Carhart (1997) four-factor pricing model. The authors tested the relationship between equity misvaluation, corporate investment decisions and equity issuance. The authors ran several robustness tests.

The empirical results show that equity market misvaluation affects corporate investment positively as the stock price deviates further away from its fundamental. Based on market timing theory, the authors find that corporate investment occurs in periods of high valuation motivated by equity issuance to benefit from the low cost of capital. This effect is more prominent for financially constrained firms. Consistent with the catering channel, the authors find that the misvaluation-investment nexus is more pronounced in firms with short-horizon investors. By examining the stocks’ long-term performance of misvalued firms, via a sorting portfolio procedure, the authors find that undervalued firms outperform and generate higher abnormal returns (Jensen’s alpha) than overvalued firms, suggesting that mispricing-driven investment appear to be short-lived and lead to lower return in the long term.

Corporate decision-makers and governance structures should pay attention to the rationality of the corporate investment decision in the context of equity market misvaluation. Managers who focus on maximizing the stock market value in the short-run at the expense of its long-term performance must give preference to value-creating investment, not driven by an external mechanism such as equity market mispricing. More generally, investors and portfolio managers must take into account the market mispricing process in decision-making. Nonetheless, from the portfolio sorting perspective, decision-makers must act in terms of high governance quality to mitigate suboptimal investment due to stock market mispricing (Jensen, 2005). Finally, equity market overvaluation, leading managers to invest via equity financing in particular, should be a signal to attract investors’ attention to seize the window of opportunity and embark on a short-term portfolio strategy. Such a strategy promises high returns in the short term.

This paper investigates jointly two theoretical channels: equity market timing and catering. The authors propose for the analysis three components of the M/B decomposition to dissociate market misvaluation at the firm and industry level from the fundamental component of market value (growth). This procedure provides a better understanding of the role of firm and industry misvaluation in explaining corporate investments. The authors provide evidence of the equity market misvaluation via a portfolio sorting procedure and a Carhart (1997) four-factor pricing model. The authors examine the effect of misvaluation on both the investment and the financing decisions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether equity market timing has a persistent impact on the firm’s capital structure or not. In achieving this purpose, there are two hypotheses developed in this study. The first hypothesis is that historical price-book-value (PBV) negatively affect leverage; while the second hypothesis is that historical PBV ratio negatively affects the change of cumulative on leverage. The sample of this study is cross sectional data obtained from the Indonesia Stock Exchange for 2001–2011 research period. The author disentangles the sample into subsamples based on IPO+k, in which k is the number of years after the initial public offering (IPO). The results show that most of the regression coefficients in the historical PBV do not have negative impact on the capital structure and only a small part of the regression coefficient of the historical PBV has a statistically negative impact on the capital structure. Therefore, the findings of this research conclude that equity market timing doesn’t have persistent impact on capital structure of the firms in Indonesia.