Underpricing: um estudo dos Initial Public Offerings (IPO) durante a pandemia da COVID-19 no mercado brasileiro

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the underpricing of the inicial public offerings in the Brazilian market. To do so, we chose a quantitative research approach, using linear regression models and descriptive statistics to compare the offerings during the pandemic (2020 and 2021) and before the pandemic (2010 to 2019). Using a sample of 113 initial public offerings between 2010 and 2021, we collected information on the characteristics of the companies, the offerings, and the underwritter. We found that pre-pandemic companies came to the market more prepared from the point of view of capital structure, operating time, profitability indexes, and with equity funds in their shareholders base. Companies that went public during the pandemic had greater leverage, a higher level of corporate governance, and required greater financial volumes per offering. Next, we performed linear regressions in order to meansure the impact of the pandemic (and the fear related to it) on the phenomenon of underpricing. The results show that if the pandemic (dummy) variable goes from 0 to 1, the underpricing increases by 10,23%, and that the fear of the pandemic is statistically significant and positive, indicating the greater the fear, the greater the underpricing. Therefore, due to the greater uncertainty brought about by the pandemic, the study concludes that the offerings during the pandemic presented greater underpricing as a way of offsetting the risk taken by investors.