Ownership dilution and earnings management: evidence from Indian IPOs

Purpose Prior research on earnings management largely assumes that newly public firms manage earnings opportunistically around IPOs. However, only a few studies have empirically examined the real motives behind newly public firms’ earnings management. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of ownership dilution on earnings management among IPO firms. The authors chose the setting of security offerings in an emerging market, which is characterised by unique ownership structure, to examine the possible incentive of owners or pre-IPO shareholders to engage in earnings management. Design/methodology/approach The study employs accrual and real transactions measures to check the presence of earnings management among 409 IPO firms from India during the period 2000‒2018. Subsequently, using ordinary least squares regression models with heteroscedasticity-robust standard errors, this paper examines the relationship between earnings management and selling or dilution incentives of pre-IPO shareholders. Findings The study finds that the degree of earnings manipulation by issuer firms is positively associated with the ownership dilution at the time of IPO as well as around lockup expiration. Practical implications The findings of this study will help the investors and regulators to understand the practice of earnings management among IPO firms and how it is linked to the ownership dilution of pre-IPO shareholders. Originality/value The paper contributes to the limited stream of research that investigates the motives of earnings management among IPO firms. It empirically establishes an association between the selling incentive of pre-IPO shareholders and earnings management.

The impact of the financial crisis on earnings management: Empirical evidence from Italian and Spanish listed companies

Our study adopts a reliable and widely acknowledged model to detect accounts manipulation in order to assess the impact of the financial crisis on Italian and Spanish listed companies’ propensity to manage their earnings. The analysis is conducted on 565 publicly traded companies on the Italian and Spanish financial markets during the time period 2005-2013. We find a lower propensity to manipulate earnings in both countries during the pre-crisis period (2005-2008) as suggested by a decrease in the number of high-risk manipulators until 2008 included. With the spread of the financial crisis, companies become more manipulators. We believe that the reason for this is to avoid giving bad news to markets, investors, and lenders after that the crisis may have impacted too negatively on firms’ performance indicators and financial equilibrium. Our empirical results provide various implications for further studies related to managements’ incentives concurrently with security offerings.

Earnings Announcements, Information Asymmetry, and Timing of Debt Offerings

ABSTRACT We empirically examine the joint predictions of the pecking order theory and the theory of time-varying asymmetric information regarding the timing of security offerings around information disclosures. We analyze loan originations and bond offerings around earnings announcements and compare them against equity offerings. In support of the theories' predictions, we find a positive association between the information sensitivity of securities and the likelihood of their issuance after earnings announcements. In particular, we find that clustering after earnings announcements is weakest in loan originations, stronger in bond offerings, and strongest in equity offerings. Also consistent with the theories, we find that the size of news in earnings announcements matters in the timing decision. We find weak evidence regarding the theories' implication that the direction of news in the announcement plays a role in the timing decision. We test and find that this latter result is partly attributable to potential costs associated with the omission of material negative information, such as litigation risk. JEL Classifications: D82; G14; G39; M41.

Implied Standard Deviations And Put-Call Parity Relations Around Primary Security Offerings

<span>This study examines the response of the options market to new security registrations and issuances. Two methods are employed to gauge option market response. The first involves the calculation of implied standard deviations (ISDs) around primary security registration and issuance dates. The second employs American put-call parity to simultaneously evaluate the relationship between put, call and stock prices around these dates. We find a statistically significant mean decrease in relative ISD five trading days before announcement of new stock issuances and a statistically significant mean increase in relative ISD one day before announcement of new debt issuances. Put-call parity tests provide evidence that the options market anticipates stock price decreases prior to announcements of both stock and debt issuance.</span>

Earnings Management and Stock Performance of Reverse Leveraged Buyouts

This study provides further evidence of earnings management around security offerings. We find positive and significant discretionary current accruals coincident with offerings of reverse LBOs. Issuers in the most aggressive quartile of earnings management have a one-year aftermarket return that is between 15% and 25% less than the most conservative quartile. We also find a negative and significant relation between abnormal accruals and post-issue abnormal returns within the first year after the offering. The relation remains after controlling for book-to-market ratio, firm size, offering size, and involvement of buyout specialists or management. Although earnings management has been used to explain post-issue long-term underperformance of IPOs and SEOs, our study shows that earnings management can explain post-offering returns of reverse LBOs, even in the absence of post-offering underperformance.