Building Castles in the Air: Evidence from Industry IPO Waves

64 Pages Posted: 22 Nov 2012 Last revised: 15 Mar 2023

See all articles by Zhi Da

Zhi Da

University of Notre Dame - Mendoza College of Business

Ravi Jagannathan

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) - Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF); Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad

Jianfeng Shen

UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: November 2012

Abstract

We provide empirical support for the conventional wisdom that there are times when optimistic investors tend to build their hopes into castles in the air, and pay a large premium over intrinsic value for stocks of firms in the early stages of their life cycles with perceived growth opportunities. We use industry IPO waves containing a set of firms in the same industry that went public at about the same time in a cluster to identify those time periods and firms that are relatively homogenous and in the same early growth stages of their life cycles. We find that three years after an industry IPO wave ends, among the firms in the wave with relatively high historical sales growth rates, those with low gross margins are over-valued relative to firms with high gross margins. They under-perform their industry IPO wave peers by 0.92% per month, or about 12% per year, during the subsequent four-year period after adjusting for risk and firm characteristics differentials. Further, the average future returns on these firms are even below the corresponding risk-free returns. Our findings contribute to the literature on inefficient capital markets by identifying situations when prices of some stocks are likely to be affected by bounded rationality or biases in the way investors make decisions, and agency issues limit the ability of more sophisticated arbitrageurs who have to rely on other people's money from exploiting any resultant profit opportunities.

Suggested Citation

Da, Zhi and Jagannathan, Ravi and Shen, Jianfeng, Building Castles in the Air: Evidence from Industry IPO Waves (November 2012). NBER Working Paper No. w18555, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2179393

Zhi Da (Contact Author)

University of Notre Dame - Mendoza College of Business ( email )

Notre Dame, IN 46556-5646
United States

Ravi Jagannathan

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management ( email )

2001 Sheridan Road
429 Andersen Hall
Evanston, IL 60208
United States
847-491-8338 (Phone)
847-491-5719 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) - Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF) ( email )

Shanghai Jiao Tong University
211 West Huaihai Road
Shanghai, 200030
China

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad ( email )

Hyderabad, Gachibowli 500 019
India

Jianfeng Shen

UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales ( email )

School of Banking and Finance
UNSW Sydney, NSW 2052
Australia

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