IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pacfin/v82y2023ics0927538x23002664.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The pre-IPO dividend and IPO underpricing: Evidence from China

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Jiaxin
  • Cheng, Ruonan
  • Huang, Yong
  • Yan, Chao

Abstract

More than one in five listed firms in China pay cash dividends during the year right before their initial public offerings (IPOs). This paper examines the association between pre-IPO dividend payment and IPO pricing using manually collected Chinese data from 2006 to 2019. We find that firms initiating pre-IPO dividends tend to have lower IPO underpricing than non-initiating firms. We also find that the effect of pre-IPO dividend initiation on IPO underpricing is more pronounced for firms with greater pre-IPO growth and profitability. Additional analyses indicate that initiating firms have better pre- and post-IPO operating performance and post-IPO stock performance. Moreover, initiating firms pay more dividends and attract significantly higher post-IPO investor attention. Collectively, the pre-IPO dividend initiation is not a short-term strategic behaviour of low-quality firms, but aims to send positive signals and improve investors' stock valuation.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Jiaxin & Cheng, Ruonan & Huang, Yong & Yan, Chao, 2023. "The pre-IPO dividend and IPO underpricing: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:82:y:2023:i:c:s0927538x23002664
    DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2023.102195
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927538X23002664
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.pacfin.2023.102195?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jay R. Ritter & Ivo Welch, 2002. "A Review of IPO Activity, Pricing, and Allocations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1795-1828, August.
    2. Wang, Shuangjin & Wang, Puxuan & Cebula, Richard J. & Foley, Maggie, 2023. "Board characteristics and IPO underpricing in China: The perspective of moderating effect of venture capitalists," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    3. Chan, Kalok & Wang, Junbo & Wei, K. C. John, 2004. "Underpricing and long-term performance of IPOs in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 409-430, June.
    4. Andrew Ellul & Marco Pagano, 2006. "IPO Underpricing and After-Market Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 381-421.
    5. Sean Cleary, 1999. "The Relationship between Firm Investment and Financial Status," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 673-692, April.
    6. Grennan, Jillian, 2019. "Dividend payments as a response to peer influence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(3), pages 549-570.
    7. Cheung, Yan-leung & OUYANG, Zhiwei & TAN, Weiqiang, 2009. "How regulatory changes affect IPO underpricing in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 692-702, December.
    8. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    9. Chen, Zhilan & Cheung, Yan-Leung & Stouraitis, Aris & Wong, Anita W.S., 2005. "Ownership concentration, firm performance, and dividend policy in Hong Kong," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 431-449, September.
    10. Yi Ru & Jian Xue & Yuan Zhang & Xin Zhou, 2020. "Social connections between media and firm executives and the properties of media reporting," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 963-1001, September.
    11. Allen, Franklin & Faulhaber, Gerald R., 1989. "Signalling by underpricing in the IPO market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 303-323, August.
    12. Huang, Yong & Yan, Chao & Chan, Kam C., 2021. "Does aggressiveness help? Evidence from IPO corruption and pricing in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    13. Shira Cohen & Igor Kadach & Gaizka Ormazabal & Stefan Reichelstein, 2023. "Executive Compensation Tied to ESG Performance: International Evidence," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(3), pages 805-853, June.
    14. Litzenberger, Robert H. & Ramaswamy, Krishna, 1979. "The effect of personal taxes and dividends on capital asset prices : Theory and empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 163-195, June.
    15. Liu, Laura Xiaolei & Lu, Ruichang & Sherman, Ann E. & Zhang, Yong, 2023. "IPO underpricing and limited attention: Theory and evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    16. John R. M. Hand & Wayne R. Landsman, 2005. "The Pricing of Dividends in Equity Valuation," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3-4), pages 435-469.
    17. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda & Stulz, Rene M., 2006. "Dividend policy and the earned/contributed capital mix: a test of the life-cycle theory," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 227-254, August.
    18. Nielsson, Ulf & Wójcik, Dariusz, 2016. "Proximity and IPO underpricing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 92-105.
    19. Easterbrook, Frank H, 1984. "Two Agency-Cost Explanations of Dividends," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 650-659, September.
    20. Michaely, Roni & Thaler, Richard H & Womack, Kent L, 1995. "Price Reactions to Dividend Initiations and Omissions: Overreaction or Drift?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(2), pages 573-608, June.
    21. Brav, Alon & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Michaely, Roni, 2005. "Payout policy in the 21st century," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 483-527, September.
    22. Officer, Micah S., 2011. "Overinvestment, corporate governance, and dividend initiations," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 710-724, June.
    23. Rock, Kevin, 1986. "Why new issues are underpriced," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1-2), pages 187-212.
    24. John, Kose & Williams, Joseph, 1985. "Dividends, Dilution, and Taxes: A Signalling Equilibrium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1053-1070, September.
    25. Sudipto Bhattacharya, 1979. "Imperfect Information, Dividend Policy, and "The Bird in the Hand" Fallacy," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 259-270, Spring.
    26. Yang, Bao & Chou, Hsin-I. & Zhao, Jing, 2020. "Innovation or dividend payout: Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 180-203.
    27. Peng, Xuan & Jia, Yibo & Chan, Kam C. & Wang, Xiongyuan, 2021. "Let us work together: The impact of customer strategic alliances on IPO underpricing and post-IPO performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    28. Javakhadze, David & Ferris, Stephen P. & Sen, Nilanjan, 2014. "An international analysis of dividend smoothing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 200-220.
    29. Ozmel, Umit & Trombley, Timothy E. & Yavuz, M. Deniz, 2019. "Outside Insiders: Does Access to Information Prior to an IPO Generate a Trading Advantage After the IPO?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(1), pages 303-334, February.
    30. Ali, Heba, 2022. "Corporate dividend policy in the time of COVID-19: Evidence from the G-12 countries," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PB).
    31. Flavin, Thomas & O'Connor, Thomas, 2017. "Reputation building and the lifecycle model of dividends," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 46(PA), pages 177-190.
    32. Tian, Lihui, 2011. "Regulatory underpricing: Determinants of Chinese extreme IPO returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 78-90, January.
    33. Raj Aggarwal & Jian Cao & Feng Chen, 2012. "Information Environment, Dividend Changes, and Signaling: Evidence from ADR Firms," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(2), pages 403-431, June.
    34. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2005. "Financing decisions: who issues stock?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 549-582, June.
    35. Cejnek, Georg & Randl, Otto & Zechner, Josef, 2021. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Corporate Dividend Policy," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(7), pages 2389-2410, November.
    36. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2004. "A Catering Theory of Dividends," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(3), pages 1125-1165, June.
    37. DeAngelo, Harry & DeAngelo, Linda & Skinner, Douglas J., 2004. "Are dividends disappearing? Dividend concentration and the consolidation of earnings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 425-456, June.
    38. Miller, Merton H & Rock, Kevin, 1985. "Dividend Policy under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1031-1051, September.
    39. Pan, Yue & Shroff, Nemit & Zhang, Pengdong, 2023. "The dark side of audit market competition," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1).
    40. Kathryn L. Dewenter & Vincent A. Warther, 1998. "Dividends, Asymmetric Information, and Agency Conflicts: Evidence from a Comparison of the Dividend Policies of Japanese and U.S. Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(3), pages 879-904, June.
    41. James E. Walter, 1963. "Dividend Policy: Its Influence On The Value Of The Enterprise," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 18(2), pages 280-291, May.
    42. Kee H. Chung & Mingsheng Li & Linda Yu, 2005. "Assets in Place, Growth Opportunities, and IPO Returns," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 34(3), Fall.
    43. John R. M. Hand & Wayne R. Landsman, 2005. "The Pricing of Dividends in Equity Valuation," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3‐4), pages 435-469, April.
    44. Charest, Guy, 1978. "Dividend information, stock returns and market efficiency-II," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2-3), pages 297-330.
    45. Kao, Jennifer L. & Wu, Donghui & Yang, Zhifeng, 2009. "Regulations, earnings management, and post-IPO performance: The Chinese evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 63-76, January.
    46. Kirsten M. Ely & Vivek Mande, 1996. "The Interdependent Use of Earnings and Dividends in Financial Analysts' Earnings Forecasts," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(2), pages 435-456, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Booth, Laurence & Zhou, Jun, 2017. "Dividend policy: A selective review of results from around the world," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 1-15.
    2. Hussein Abedi Shamsabadi & Byung-Seong Min & Richard Chung, 2016. "Corporate governance and dividend strategy: lessons from Australia," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 12(5), pages 583-610, October.
    3. Darakhshan Younis & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2014. "Market Imperfections and Dividend Policy Decisions of Manufacturing Sector of Pakistan," PIDE-Working Papers 2014:99, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    4. Roni Michaely & Stefano Rossi & Michael Weber & Michael Weber, 2017. "The Information Content of Dividends: Safer Profits, Not Higher Profits," CESifo Working Paper Series 6751, CESifo.
    5. Brav, Alon & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Michaely, Roni, 2005. "Payout policy in the 21st century," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 483-527, September.
    6. Kartal Demirg ne, 2015. "Determinants of Target Dividend Payout Ratio: A Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag Analysis," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 5(2), pages 418-426.
    7. Ijaz Ali & Ali Gohar & Omar Meharzi, 2017. "Why do Firms Change Their Dividend Policy?," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(3), pages 411-422.
    8. Fuller, Kathleen P. & Goldstein, Michael A., 2011. "Do dividends matter more in declining markets?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 457-473, June.
    9. Kathryn E. Easterday & Pradyot K. Sen, 2023. "Another look at the dividend-price relationship in the accounting valuation framework," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 879-925, October.
    10. Luís Krug Pacheco & Clara Raposo, 2009. "ON the TIMING of INITIAL STOCK REPURCHASES," Working Papers de Gestão (Management Working Papers) 06, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    11. Eva Liljeblom & Sabur Mollah & Patrik Rotter, 2015. "Do dividends signal future earnings in the Nordic stock markets?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 493-511, April.
    12. James, Hui & Benson, Bradley W. & Wu, Chen (Ken), 2017. "Does CEO ownership affect payout policy? Evidence from using CEO scaled wealth-performance sensitivity," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 328-345.
    13. Blau, Benjamin M. & Fuller, Kathleen P., 2008. "Flexibility and dividends," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 133-152, April.
    14. Maria Elisabete Duante Neves, 2017. "Payout and Firm's Catering," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(4), pages 104-132.
    15. Paul McGuinness & Kevin Lam & João Vieito, 2015. "Gender and other major board characteristics in China: Explaining corporate dividend policy and governance," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 989-1038, December.
    16. Francis, Bill B. & Samuel, Gilna & Wu, Qiang, 2023. "The impact of short selling on dividend smoothing," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    17. Ouyang, Puman & Zhong, Ligang, 2023. "Asset redeployability and dividend payout policy," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 91-105.
    18. Jeffrey J. Coulton & Caitlin Ruddock, 2011. "Corporate payout policy in Australia and a test of the life‐cycle theory," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(2), pages 381-407, June.
    19. Chemmanur, Thomas J. & He, Jie & Hu, Gang & Liu, Helen, 2010. "Is dividend smoothing universal?: New insights from a comparative study of dividend policies in Hong Kong and the U.S," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 413-430, September.
    20. Faruk Bostanci & Eyup Kadioglu & Guven Sayilgan, 2018. "Determinants of Dividend Payout Decisions: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis of Turkish Stock Market," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-16, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dividend policy; IPO pricing; Firm performance; Investor valuation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G35 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Payout Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:82:y:2023:i:c:s0927538x23002664. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/pacfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.