What Drives Returns and Underpricing of Seasoned Equity Offerings in Taiwan?

We use over 200 firms in Taiwan to examine two issues: (1) how investors in Taiwan react to seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) when firms plan to make capital investments, and (2) factors driving the underwriting price of the stock offerings. Our results indicate that investors seem to have strong negative reactions to the SEOs announcement; they prefer alternative financings for firms with good profitability when they make capital investments. Several interesting results related to underpricing of SEOs are noted. First, larger firms and larger underwriters appear to have more underpricing. The number of underwriters will have a net positive effect on underpricing. Finally, the brokerage firm in comparing to the bank as the underwriter would yield a net positive effect on the underwriting price.