招股说明书可读性影响IPO抑价了吗?

Does Prospectus Readability Affect IPO Underpricing?

本文以上市时间在2014-2017年的A股上市公司的招股说明书为文本分析对象,构建了中文金融文本可读性指标,从印象管理和信息不对称视角,实证分析了招股说明书文本可读性对IPO抑价的影响。研究发现,招股说明书文本可读性越低,IPO抑价程度越高,且上述结论在进行稳健性检验后仍然成立;招股说明书文本可读性对IPO抑价的影响在机构投资者持股比例高、非国有企业样本组内更为显著。进一步研究表明,招股说明书文本可读性越低,上市首日换手率越高;招股说明书文本信息可读性与上市公司财务表现呈现正相关关系。本研究工作拓宽了中文金融文本分析的研究范畴,从信息披露角度进一步丰富了IPO抑价问题的相关研究,同时为监管当局完善信息披露制度提供了新思路。

This paper takes 822 prospectuses as the textual analysis object, and constructs the readability index of Chinese financial text. From the perspectives of impression management and information asymmetry, we conduct the first empirical analysis on the impact of the readability of prospectus text on IPO underpricing. We find that prospectus readability has a significantly negative correlation with IPO underpricing. More specifically: in the sample group of high institutional investors,prospectus readability can effectively reduce the degree of IPO underpricing. From the perspective of property right, prospectus readability is negatively correlated with IPO underpricing only in the sample group of non-state-owned enterprises. At the same time, prospectus readability is negatively related to the IPO first-day turnover rate, that is, the higher the prospectus readability, the lower the degree of disagreement among investors;the lower the prospectus readability, the worse the financial performance of the IPO company after its listing. The result shows that the obscure prospectus makes managers effectively achieve the company’s impression management objectives. By reducing the ability and quantity of investors to extract information extracted from the prospectus, the degree of information asymmetry between the issuer and the investor is affected, and the IPO underpricing level is improved to some extent. The professional investors and property right will affect the mechanism of prospectus readability on IPO underpricing.The prospectus with poor readability increases the cost of investors’ information processing, and deepens the information asymmetry between investors and issuers in a short period of time. However, the market will eventually identify the true quality of the listed company, and the complex information in the prospectus will not play a deceptive role. The management’s information disclosure strategy for impression management gradually fails. This study broadens the scope of Chinese financial text analysis, and further enriches the relevant research on IPO underpricing from the perspective of information disclosure.