IPO Pricing and Dealers’ Interaction: A Stochastic Frontier Approach (original) (raw)

Investment Banks' Entry into New IPO Markets and IPO Underpricing

Management Science, 2014

We examine the relationship between investment banks' initial public offering (IPO) market shares and their prior IPO underpricing in the new IPO market for China-based companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. To gain expertise in Chinese business practices, investment banks have the incentive to obtain business in this new IPO market by providing high offer prices to the issuer, leading to less underpricing and less money on the table. We hypothesize and find that the less an investment bank underprices China-based company IPOs, the greater its subsequent market share of China-based company IPOs in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Furthermore, this relationship is driven by a bank's initial China-based company IPO deals. These results suggest that in new IPO markets, investment banks' initial market shares, obtained through lower underpricing, help them grow their market shares in later periods, possibly through the expertise gained in the initial business. This paper wa...

How investment bankers determine the offer price and allocation of initial public offerings

1989

We investigate how investment bankers use indications of interest from their client investors to price and allocate new issues. We model the process as an auction constructed to induce asymmetrically informed investors to reveal what they know to the underwriter. The analysis yields a number of empirical implications, including that new issues will be underpriced and that distributional priority will be given to an underwriter's regular investors. We also find that tension between an unde.rwriter's propensity to presell an issue and an issuing firm's desire to obtain maximum proceeds affects the type of underwrit;ng contract chosen.

The economic role of institutional investors in auction IPOs

Journal of Corporate Finance, 2019

We examine the economic role of institutional investors in auction initial public offerings (IPOs) with and without a discretionary tranche of IPO shares pledged to institutional investors prior to public filing. We find that underpricing in auction IPOs with a discretionary tranche is lower (higher) than underpricing in auction IPOs without a discretionary tranche when institutional demand for IPO shares is high (low). The findings, which hold after controlling for potential endogeneity, reveal a cost-benefit tradeoff in auction IPOs that is sensitive to institutional demand, and explain why auction, albeit commonly used for debt instruments, is rarely used for IPOs.

Bookbuilding versus auction selling methods: A study of US IPOs

Venture Capital, 2007

This study documents differences between two widely known IPO selling methods: the auction method and bookbuilding method for a sample of US IPOs. We employ a matched firm technique to compare the two IPO selling methods and empirically test hypotheses relating to the two selling methods. Our sample comprises all auction IPOs in the US between January 1999 and December 2004. Our results indicate that in comparison to matched bookbuilding IPOs, auction IPOs are less underpriced and thus leave less money on the table for the issuers, and have lower underwriter spreads. Relative to auction IPOs, bookbuilding IPOs are more likely to be followed and positively recommended by analysts and they receive more coverage by lead analysts, i.e. analysts affiliated with lead underwriters. Moreover, bookbuilding IPOs tend to outperform auction IPOs up to 18 months post-IPO, exhibit lower aftermarket volatility, and insiders of auction IPOs agree to lock up a higher fraction of their shares and hold them for a longer period of time.

Searching in the Pre-IPO Market-Interaction between Private Firms and Investment Banks

Accounting and Finance Research, 2015

We are the first to set up a random search based model to describe the pre-IPO market searching and matching process between private firms with intent to sell equity in an IPO and investment banks (IB) that underwrite the issue. Due to the wide existence of the market search friction, the necessary time is required in order to form a strategic pair between a private firm and an investment bank for a successful IPO. We derive a closed-form formula for the investment bank's share of profit from an IPO transaction at the market equilibrium. The calibrated simulation result for this value is consistent with the "seven percent solution" initially identified by Chen and Ritter (2000). Our model suggests that IPO underpricing is not a deterministic phenomenon but an empirical observation, the existence of which largely originates from the market-wide co-movement between the total gross proceeds of each IPO and the total number of successful IPOs.

The Role of Institutional Investors in Initial Public Offerings

Review of Financial Studies, 2010

In this paper, we use a large sample of transaction-level institutional trading data to analyze the role of institutional investors in initial public offerings (IPOs). The theoretical literature on IPOs has long argued that institutional investors possess private information about IPOs and that underpricing is a mechanism for compensating them to reveal this private information. We study whether institutions indeed have private information about IPOs, retain their information advantage in post-IPO trading, and are able to realize significant profits from their participation in IPOs. We also study institutional IPO allocations and allocation sales to analyze whether institutions play an important role in supporting IPOs in the aftermarket and are rewarded by underwriters for playing such a role. We find that institutions sell 70.2% of their IPO allocations in the first year, fully realize the "money left on the table," and do not dissipate these profits in post-IPO trading. Further, institutions hold allocations in IPOs with weaker post-issue demand for a longer period, and they are rewarded for this by underwriters with more IPO allocations. Finally, institutional trading has predictive power for long-run IPO performance, especially in IPOs in which they received allocations; however, this predictive power decays over time. Overall, our results suggest that institutional investors possess significant private information about IPOs, play an important supportive role in the IPO aftermarket, and receive considerable compensation for their participation in IPOs. JEL classification: G14; G24

Underwriter networks, investor attention, and initial public offerings

Journal of Financial Economics, 2016

Using various centrality measures from social network analysis, we analyze how the loca- tion 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 pub- lic 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 invest- ment 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.

Sticky Prices: IPO Pricing on Nasdaq and the Neuer Markt

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2002

This paper examines the IPO pricing processes of two different markets, each of which employs bookbuilding methods for marketing the IPO shares. For each market we investigate two questions: Does bookbuilding serve mainly as a method for distributing shares, or also as a means for gathering information? And, to what extent do underwriters respond in IPO pricing to any information that they obtain through bookbuilding?

Auctioned IPOs: The US evidence

Journal of Financial Economics, 2010

Between 1999 and 2007, WR Hambrecht has completed 19 IPOs in the U.S. using an auction mechanism. We analyze investor behavior and mechanism performance in these auctioned IPOs using detailed bidding data. The existence of some bids posted at high prices suggests that some investors (mostly retail) try to free-ride on the mechanism. But institutional demand in these auctions is very elastic, suggesting that institutional investors reveal information in the bidding process. Investor participation is largely predictable based on deal size, and demand is dominated by institutions. Flipping is equally prevalent in auctions as in bookbuilt deals-but unlike in bookbuilding, investors in auctions tend to flip their shares more in cold deals. Finally, we find that institutional investors, who provide more information, are rewarded by obtaining a larger share of the deals that have higher initial returns. Our results therefore suggest that auctioned IPOs could be an effective alternative to traditional bookbuilding.