Operating Performance and Its Relationship to Market Performance of Chinese Initial Public Offerings

We investigate the operating performance changes of initial public offerings (IPOs) and the relation between operating performance and both short-run underpricing and long-run market returns of IPOs. We find that listing causes a significant deterioration in profitability, sales-growth rates, and efficiency, and brings a significant increase in sales and a significant decrease in leverage. We also find underpricing has insignificant explanatory power in predicting post-issue operating performance, which suggests that the signaling hypothesis does not explain underpricing very well in Chinese IPO markets. Using a cross-sectional analysis, we find firms with higher return on assets (ROA), smaller size (lower sales), higher sales-growth rates, higher asset turnover, and higher debt-to-asset ratios enjoy higher long-run market returns.