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The Puzzle of Frequent and Large Issues of Debt and Equity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2021
Abstract
More frequent, larger, and more recent debt and equity issues in the prior 3 fiscal years are followed by lower stock returns in the subsequent year. The intercept of a q-factor calendar-time regression for the value-weighted (VW) portfolio of firms with at least 3 large issues is −0.63% per month (t-stat. = −4.31). Purging the factor returns of recent issuers increases the magnitude of the estimated underperformance following frequent equity issues. A VW Fama–MacBeth regression shows that firms with 3 equity issues underperform nonissuers by 0.65% per month (t-stat. = −2.65). Earnings announcement returns are low following frequent issues, especially equity issues.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 170 - 206
- Creative Commons
- This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington
Footnotes
We thank an anonymous referee, Mark Flannery, Jon Garfinkel, Jason Karceski, Paul Malatesta (the editor), Feng Zhang, and Clara Qing Zhou, and the participants in seminars at Kennesaw State University, the University of Calgary, York University, and the 2016 FMA Annual Meeting and the 2017 FMA Asia/Pacific Conference for comments, Kenneth French for making the Fama–French factor returns available, and Lu Zhang for sharing the q-factor returns.
References
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