Pricing of IPOs and their after issue performance in the Indian equity market

This study investigates the pricing of new issues in the Indian equity market during the period shortly following the deregulation of the market for new issues. We evaluate the importance of book value and market value estimates in determining issue prices as well as prices on the first day of trading. We also use variables that may reduce uncertainty (age to proxy for awareness of the company) and information asymmetry (the extent of the promoter’s contribution to the new issue) in order to test whether uncertainty and information asymmetry have an impact on pricing of new issues. Results indicate that pricing of new issues appears to be consistent with rational decision‐making. We also examine the extent of underpricing of IPOs in India by calculating the rate of return earned by the subscribers on the first day the shares trade publicly. The first day return is, on average, 72 per cent. We then simulate what this return would have been if the government regulations had still been in place. With government restrictions, the first day’s return would have been 160 per cent. These results are consistent with the expectations that removal of restrictions results in lower returns to subscribers and lower cost of capital for the issuing firm. Finally, we examine whether there are differences in first day returns or other variables for companies that issue shares at a price above the government benchmark and the companies that issues shares at prices below the benchmark. Results indicate that there are no significant differences in first day returns between the two groups of companies. There are, however, significant differences between the two groups with respect to relative size of the issue and the difference between the forecasted and current book value. This indicates that the CCI price might be used as a benchmark, which is, then adjusted upwards or downwards to place greater emphasis on expected performance.