Issuing Bonds, Shares or Staying Private? Determinants of Going Public in an Emerging Economy

The Warsaw Stock Exchange is one of Europe’s largest exchanges by the number of IPOs, although it retains features of a market in post-transition countries, including a relatively small size, shallowness and a weak institutional framework. In this study, we use a large dataset to explore firms’ decisions to issue equity on the main or alternative market and debt on the bond market. We observe that in general, larger, more profitable firms are more likely to go public, although in contrast to developed economies, these firms tend to be younger. Moreover, we find that current market valuation positively affects the decision to go public on the main market, and we establish that highly leveraged companies are more likely to issue either shares on the alternative market or bonds. At the same time, however, we observe that firms issuing shares on the alternative market are most likely to manipulate their profitability prior to going public.