Seasoned equity offerings and use of issue proceeds - Evidence from the Nordics

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY: The purpose of this thesis is to study the relation between seasoned equity offerings and the uses of issue proceeds. More specifically, I compare issuers' stated intentions of the uses of issue proceeds and the actual uses of the funds. Moreover, I investigate the relation between issuers' stated intended use of issue proceeds and subsequent stock market and operating performance. The study adds to the existing literature by applying existing methodologies and framework in a Nordic context. DATA AND METHODOLOGY: The SEO data employed in this study has been gathered from the Dealogic database. The SEOs have been divided in to three subgroups based on their communicated intended uses of issue proceeds following Dealogic's classification. The sample consists of SEOs conducted in the Nordic countries during 2000-2011, where issue proceeds exceed EUR 10 million. Financial and stock market data used in empirical analyses has been retrieved from Thomson One, Factset and Datastream databases. To test the hypotheses, I various statistical tests and standard event study methodologies are applied. FINDINGS: The results of the study indicate that that seasoned equity issuers use the issue proceeds as communicated prior to the offering. Further, I find that the announcement effect is better for issuers stating investment purposes as the use of issue proceeds, compared to issuers stating other reasons. Additionally, firms stating investment purposes as the use of issue proceeds seem to exhibit better post-issue stock market performance compared to firms stating other purposes for the issue proceeds. However, I find that seasoned equity issuers exhibit negative abnormal returns compared to benchmarks in 24 and 36 month time period subsequent to the offering