Abstract

Between 1993 and 2009, 14.69% and 12.34% of all public equity offerings announced in the U.S. and Canada were eventually withdrawn, respectively. Less than 10% of all cancelled IPOs are eventually completed versus over 20% of all withdrawn SEOs. We measure the impact of issuer riskiness, issuer characteristics and timing of the offerings on the likelihoods of IPO and SEO cancelations and subsequent return of these offerings. We find that the dotcom and subprime crises have a greater positive influence on the probability of withdrawal in the United Stated than in Canada. Our results suggest that greater post-announcement changes in market and economic conditions tend to increase the probability of withdrawal and that good general market conditions subsequent to announcement and to withdrawal are positively related to the completion and reissue of offerings, respectively. Overall, cancelation of initial and seasoned equity offerings is driven by different firm- and issue-specific factors and the effect of these variables varies across countries.

An analysis of stock price performance of successfully returning offerings on the three days centered on their announcements suggests that second-time successful SEOs underperform a sample of contemporaneous offerings by 2.09% and 5.76% in the U.S. and Canada, respectively. Overall, underpricing on the day of issue is not affected by prior offering cancellation. However, over the long-term, we find that U.S. equity offerings underperform their profitability-matched sample of contemporaneous offerings.