Initial Public Offerings underpricing in the context of theoretical background

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to identify which theories regarding the phenomenon of Initial Public Offerings underpricing are applicable to the Polish stock market. To accomplish that goal a study of determinants of IPO underpricing at the Polish stock market between 2007 and 2016 was conducted. Its results indicate that over the study period the average initial adjusted return was 7.89% which is significantly lower than the value obtained in the previous studies at the Polish market. The strongest determinant of underpricing turned out to be the information asymmetry proxied by the reduction rate in the individual investors tranche. This allowed to confirm the relevance of Kevin Rock’s winner’s curse theory on the Polish market. These results did not provide grounds for rejecting the hypothesis of the positive influence of the structure of the offer on underpricing, which is in line with another asymmetry theory introduced by Lawrence Benveniste and Paul Spindt. Moreover, the study confirmed the ‘hot market issue’ hypothesis which indicates that underpricing of IPO is higher in favourable market conditions. On the other hand, the same results rejected the hypothesis of higher underpricing of the privatisation offers as well as the hypothesis of the reliance on the positive impact of scale of the offer on the initial return.