Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether initial public offering (IPO) over-subscription is a function of firm’s prestige signals conveyed by third parties with reputational capital such as underwriter, auditor and independent non-executive board member.

The relationship between prestige signals and over-subscription ratio (OSR) of IPOs is analysed using a cross-sectional regression based on a sample of 393 IPOs issued between January 2000 and December 2015.

The results indicate that IPOs underwritten by reputable underwriters have lower OSR than those underwritten by non-reputable underwriters. While issuer engages reputable underwriter to certify firm quality to reduce information asymmetry, the action brings with it lower initial returns for its IPO. Investors interpret the signal conveyed by issuer’s choice of underwriter from under-pricing perspective and respond accordingly by reducing IPO demand. This implies that investors regard under-pricing as a more valuable signal than firm quality signal associated with underwriter reputation. The findings also indicate that over-subscription increases in IPOs that have above average initial returns and higher institutional participation. Issuing firms that go public in a period of high IPO volume are associated with low OSR.

This is the first paper to examine the relationship between the prestige signals and OSR of IPOs in the Malaysian context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of prestige signals measured by the reputations of the underwriter, auditor and board size on the heterogeneity of investor belief about the true value of IPO in the Malaysian IPO market.

This study employs a sample of 281 IPOs issued between January 2000 and December 2015. The relationship between prestige signals and investor heterogeneity, measured by first-day price range of IPOs, is analysed using cross-sectional regression and quantile regression technique.

Of the three prestige signals, the findings show that only underwriter reputation and board size have significant negative relationships with IPO first-day price range. This implies that IPOs underwritten by reputable underwriters and issuing firms with larger board members have lower heterogeneity of opinion among investors. The findings also show that underwriter and auditor reputations have negative relationship with IPO initial return, suggesting that these prestige signals help to reduce IPO under-pricing, which is a direct cost of raising capital for the issuing firm. Furthermore, the results indicate that offer price, initial return, over-subscription ratio and private placement are associated with higher first-day price range. However, the findings on offer size suggest that larger IPO offer size is associated with lower first-day price range. Overall, the findings suggest that firm’s prestige signals reduce opinion heterogeneity among investors and that lower investors’ heterogeneity leads to lower IPO under-pricing cost for issuing firms.

Despite the importance of underwriter, auditor and board member reputations in signalling firm’s quality and reducing the level of information asymmetry of the listing firm’s issues, research on the effects of prestige signals on investor heterogeneity remains unexplored. This study investigates the role of prestige signals in influencing investors’ heterogeneity in Malaysia. The authors conjecture that underwriter, auditor and board member with higher reputations are associated with lower levels of opinion heterogeneity among IPO investors.

This study aims to investigate the moderating role of investor demand on the relationship between the investors' divergence of beliefs and the first-day initial public offering (IPO) return.

The study sample covers the period from 2010 to 2019 and consists of 117 IPOs that are priced using the fixed price and listed on the Malaysian stock exchange (Bursa Malaysia). This study employed both the ordinary least square (OLS) and the quantile regression (QR) methods.

Investor demand, proxied by the over-subscription ratio (OSR), plays a moderating role in increasing the effect of investors' divergence of beliefs on initial return, and the moderation effects vary across the quantile of initial return. Pure moderation effects are observed at the bottom and top quantiles, suggesting that investor demand is necessary for divergence of beliefs to influence IPO initial return. However, at the middle quantile of initial return, investor demand is a quasi-moderator. That is, the OSR not only moderates the relationship between the divergence of beliefs and initial return but also has a positive effect on the initial return.

Investors' excessive demand for an IPO issue exacerbates the IPO under-pricing issue induced by a divergence of beliefs amongst investors, thus rendering greater equity market inefficiency.

To the authors' knowledge, this study is amongst the first to empirically investigate the moderating role of investor demand on the investors' divergence of beliefs and IPO initial return relationship.

The study aims to measure the subscription level and examine the determinants of oversubscription of small and medium enterprise (SME) initial public offerings (IPOs) in India.

The study employs cross sectional data to analyze 403 SME IPOs issued from Feb 2012 to May 2018 and listed on Bombay Stock Exchange's small and medium enterprise (BSE SME) platform and National Stock Exchange (NSE) EMERGE to investigate the determinants of oversubscription of SME IPOs. Hence, the study makes use of ordinary least square regression and quantile regression to test the hypotheses formulated for the determinants of oversubscription.

The main findings unveil that while issue price, pricing mechanism, listing delay negatively influence oversubscription; firm size, underwriter reputation, hot market and underpricing have been divulged to positively influence oversubscription. However, issue size emerged out to be significant in quantile regression at 25th, 50th and 75th quantiles.

The present study is confined to limited number of variables in understanding the factors impacting oversubscription. Future studies could include macroeconomic variables like gross domestic product (GDP), inflation rate, industry specific variable, i.e. technology/nontechnology industry, financial/nonfinancial industry for better understanding. Cross country analysis is suggested in future studies to validate the findings of current study. Future studies are advised to conduct the study examining the factors affecting oversubscription in light of COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings of the present study offer implications to academicians, investors, investment advisors and regulators. It provides useful insights to researchers by listing the factors that contribute to variation in subscription levels in emerging economy like India thereby, paving the way for future researches in SME IPOs in countries with different institutional settings. For investors, the study provides additional and novel information useful for IPO valuation and informed investment decisions. In addition, the findings put investment advisors in better place to guide potential investors regarding investment in good quality SME stocks (i.e. highly subscribed stocks) in more informative manner. Last but not the least, as this study would assist the regulators in handling future IPOs in a way that augments the chances of success of SME IPOs.

This study is a novel contribution in widening the IPO literature by examining the relationship between pre-IPO firm actions like issue price, pricing mechanism, issue size, firm size, listing delay, underwriter reputation, hot market, underpricing and oversubscription in unexplored settings of Indian SME IPOs.

This study examines the impact of the trading volume on Initial Public Offering (IPO) initial return in the context of an emerging market from January 2006 to December 2016. Models consist of hierarchical and multiple regressions have been evaluated. Our results show, firstly, IPO provides an average of 21.90% of initial return to investors on the first trading day, 9.08% of return on the second day of trading, and 7.12% of return on the third day of return. Secondly, there is a positive relationship between the oversubscription ratio and initial return and no relationship between trading volume and initial return on the first three trading day. Thirdly, the trading volume does not act as a moderator that worsens the relationship between the oversubscription ratio and initial return. Lastly, this study shows that investors should actively participate in the subsequent trading of an IPO. Higher participation will bring greater liquidity and shareholder wealth in the stock market. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study on the moderating effect of trading volume on IPO initial return in an emerging market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the initial return patterns of Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs) and whether shari'a‐compliant status would alter such patterns.

The effect of shari'a‐compliant status on the patterns of initial return of IPOs is analyzed using a sample of 386 IPOs issued between January 1999 and December 2007.

The preliminary results indicate that over the study period, the initial returns of Malaysian IPOs drop substantially from 94.91 percent reported from the pre‐crisis period of 1990‐1998 to 31.99 percent, a level more comparable to that reported in advanced markets. Since the initial returns do not revert to pre‐crisis levels, the new low IPO underpricing trend is more likely to be associated with the removal of pricing restraints. The results of regression analyses on the full sample, however, suggest that there is no drastic change with respect to factors that drive initial returns in Malaysian IPOs. With regards to shari'a‐compliant status, IPOs of this subsample show similar profiles to those of non‐shari'a counterparts. However, other than demand, the two subsamples are driven by different factors. Initial returns of shari'a‐compliant IPOs are driven by the size and type of offers, whereas those of the non‐shari'a IPOs are driven by risks.

Future studies should re‐examine the issue by taking into consideration the extensiveness of a firm's compliance to shari'a rules and other predictor variables.

This paper is one of the first to examine the effect of shari'a‐compliant status on the performance of IPOs.

This study investigated the effect of pricing mechanism and oversubscription on the heterogeneity of investors' opinions on initial public offering (IPO) valuation.

Besides the ordinary least square method, this study incorporated robust least square, stepwise least square and quantile regression methods to investigate the aftermarket behaviour of investors using the price range on the first day of trading of 82 IPOs listed on the Pakistan stock exchange.

The aftermarket behaviour of investors was found to be significantly influenced by the pricing mechanism, oversubscription, financial leverage, political stability and the risk of IPO, whereas control of corruption showed an insignificant impact. Concurrently, the findings showed that pricing mechanism and oversubscription played a crucial role in determining the intensity of investors' heterogeneous opinions at high levels of significance.

Pricing mechanism and oversubscription not only signal the quality of IPOs but also provide an important means for reducing the information asymmetry associated with new listings. Based on the literature review, it was found that both the pricing mechanism and oversubscription have yet to be explored in investigating the aftermarket behaviour of investors using the price range in the Pakistan IPO market. This study suggests that book building pricing mechanism and oversubscription are associated with lower heterogeneity in investors’ opinions at a high level of significance.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of underwriter reputation on the valuation of Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs).

This study employed cross-sectional multiple regression models to analyse the relationship between underwriter reputation and IPO valuation that included 466 IPOs listed on Bursa Malaysia from 2000 to 2017.

The results revealed that underwriter reputation had a significant negative association with IPO valuation. Firms that engaged the services of reputable underwriters had their IPO offer prices set lower than the intrinsic values during the listing. After incorporating firms' size, this study found a positive relationship between underwriter reputation and IPO valuation. Big firms (high quality) hired reputable underwriters for certification purposes as issuers were aware that the cost of hiring a reputable underwriter would be justified by increased transparency after listing. Therefore, firms that engaged reputable underwriters had approximately fair values since issuers assumed that the price would be close to the intrinsic value following enhanced transparency post-listing.

Future studies should focus on other non-financial factors, such as auditor reputation.

The present study provides new insights into the certification role of underwriters in valuing IPOs in the Malaysian market.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the disclosure of earnings forecasts in firms' prospectuses to explain investor demands or, in other words, oversubscription rates of Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs).

Ordinary least squares and robust methods were used to examine cross-sectional data comprising 466 fixed-price IPOs reported for the period from January 2000 to February 2020 on Bursa Malaysia.

The results showed that IPOs with earnings forecasts obtained higher oversubscription rates than those without earnings forecasts. IPOs with earnings forecasts provide value-relevant signals to prospective investors about the good prospects of firms, resulting in an increase in the demand for IPO shares. For the IPO samples listed during the global financial crisis (GFC) period, IPOs with earnings forecasts had negative impacts on the oversubscription rates. These results were robust to quantile methods and the two-stage least squares method.

The research findings provide fresh information for investors regarding the importance of earnings forecasts as a trustworthy signal of a firm’s quality when making share subscription decisions.

The regulator is advised to encourage issuers to include earnings forecasts in their prospectuses since such forecasts help to increase the demand for IPOs.

This study contributes to the literature by offering empirical evidence regarding the signalling impact of earnings forecast disclosures on investor demands for Malaysian IPOs. Moreover, this study provides evidence demonstrating the impact of earnings forecast disclosures on oversubscription rates of Malaysian IPOs during the GFC period.

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.