Is There Any Life After Going Public? Evidence from the Canadian Market

Abstract

This article examines the survival profile of Canadian initial public offerings (IPOs). More specifically, the authors develop multinomial logit models based on the information contained in the prospectus and attempt to determine what factors influence the post-issue transition of the IPO firms into survivors, non-survivors, or targets. They find that larger IPOs experience a lower probability of delisting, and higher underpricing implies a lower probability of failure or becoming a target. Further, the presence of venture capitalists at the IPO stage seems to influence the post-IPO transition state. The authors also estimate an accelerated-failure-time model as a robustness test and find that the survival time for IPOs increases with the level of underpricing and decreases during hot issue periods. This latter result suggests that leaving money on the table is not a bad thing as generally perceived and has some beneficial outcomes such as enhancing the survivability of the firm.