Author
Abstract
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by examining the underpricing of European real estate corporations and identifying determinants explaining the phenomenon of setting the offer price at a discount at SEOs. Design/methodology/approach - With a sample of 470 SEOs of European real estate investment trusts (REITs) and real estate operating companies (REOCs) from 2004 to 2018, multivariate regression models are applied to test for theories on the pricing of SEOs. This paper furthermore tests for differences in underpricing for REITs and REOCs as well as specialized and diversified property companies. Findings - Significant underpricing of 3.06 percent is found, with REITs (1.90 percent) being statistically less underpriced than REOCs (5.08 percent). The findings support the market timing theory by showing that managers trying to time the equity market gain from lower underpricing. Furthermore, underwritten offerings are more underpriced to reduce the risk of the arranging bank, but top-tier underwriters are able to reduce offer price discounts by being more successful in attracting investors. The results cannot support the value uncertainty hypothesis, but they are in line with placement cost stories. In addition, specialized property companies are subject to lower underpricing. Practical implications - An optimal issuance strategy taking into account timing, relative offer size and the choice of the underwriter can minimize the amount of “money left on the table” and therefore contribute to the lower cost of raising capital. Originality/value - This is the first study to investigate SEO underpricing for European real estate corporations, pricing differences of REITs and REOCs in seasoned offerings and the effect of market timing on the pricing of SEOs.
Suggested Citation
Felix Lorenz, 2019.
"Underpricing and market timing in SEOs of European REITs and REOCs,"
Journal of Property Investment & Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(3), pages 163-180, December.
Handle:
RePEc:eme:jpifpp:jpif-07-2019-0099
DOI: 10.1108/JPIF-07-2019-0099
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:jpifpp:jpif-07-2019-0099. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.