Seasoned Offerings, Imitation Costs, and the Underpricing of Initial Public Offerings

The author presents a signaling model in which high-quality firms underprice at the initial public offering in order to obtain a higher price at a seasoned offering. The main assumption is that low-quality firms must invest in imitation expenses to appear to be high-quality firms, and that with some probability this imitation is discovered between offerings. Underpricing by high-quality firms at the initial public offering then adds sufficient signaling costs to these imitation expenses to induce low-quality firms to reveal their quality voluntarily. In addition, the paper provides empirical evidence that many firms raise substantial amounts of additional equity capital after their initial public offering. Copyright 1989 by American Finance Association.