Pricing And Long-Run Performance Of The Venture-Backed And Nonventure-Backed IPOS

Abstract

Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) were the most prevalent form to raise capital by firms wanting to go public during the last decade (1990 – 2000) in the United State. There were thousands of firms that went public for the first time, mostly in the technology-heavy NASDAQ stock market. Along with the regular IPOs came the IPOs backed by venture capitalists, who specialize in financing promising startup companies and bringing them public. As one-third of the IPOs were backed by venture capitalists during 1990 – 2000, our purpose here is to examine the pricing and long-run performance of the venture-backed and nonventure-backed IPOs that were issued in the NYSE and NASDAQ stock market during the period covered by our study. We have found, among others, that the venture-backed IPOs performed much better as compared to the nonventure-backed IPOs. The returns of the former were consistently higher than the latter during 1900 – 2000. Also, the price returns as well as the operating ratios and the growth of cash flows, were higher both in the NYSE and NASDAQ market. The regression equations also confirmed closer association with the independent variables belonging to the IPOs backed by venture capital than the non-venture capital.