Initial Public Offerings : An investigation of IPO's on the swedish market

When a firm decides to go public, two abnormalities often occur. The first is called underpricing and can be defined as a capital loss made by the company the first day of trade due to that the offer price is lower than the closing price after the first day of trade. The increase in stock value is equal to capital the issuing firm could have gained initially; this capital loss is referred to as the “money left on the table”. The second abnormality, underperformance, is a result from underpricing. It means that the stocks that were underpriced the first day also tend to underperform 3-5 years after the initial public offering (IPO) compared to competitors within the same industry. These two abnormalities together constitutes a problem for the firm because they loose money. However it also enables investors to make a quick profit. There are many studies covering this area, however mostly made by Americans, therefore the aim of this report is to investigate whether the two abnormalities exist on the Swedish market. In order to fulfill the purpose, companies that were listed 1998-2007 were investigated. Their stock performance is analyzed both on the day of IPO, where we found that 51% of the companies listed were underpriced, with an average of 23%. Further, the average “money left on the table” per company was 3.9 MSEK. The stock prices have also been analyzed on a one- as well as a five year period after the IPO in order to analyze the long-run performance and later compare it to the rest of the industry as well as industry index. We found that most of the companies that where underpriced also tend to follow underperformance. However, how long they underperform depends in which industry they operate. The IT industry, for example had a negative performance after 5 years whereas the Industrials industry has the turning-point from negative performance before 5 years