Do Cost Behaviors Affect Cost of Equity: Evidence from Seasoned Equity Offering?

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of firms' cost behavior on their seasoned equity offering (SEO) performance. The empirical findings show that cost‐stickier SEO firms experience more negative SEO cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). The economic mechanism of this association is that cost‐stickier SEO firms deal with higher information asymmetry and issue fewer debts, which reduce their SEO CARs. SEO firm cost behavior also affects corporate SEO decisions and announcement returns in different life cycles. Among the three economic mechanisms, the information asymmetry channel has been found as the dominant one. This study also indicates that cost‐stickier firms are less likely to conduct SEOs than their counterparts. In contrast, the motivation for Chinese SEO issuance for cost‐stickier firms is market timing rather than adjusting the capital structure or financing for investment and growth. Additionally, the negative impact of cost stickiness on corporate SEO returns is less pronounced for firms associated with industry‐specialized auditors and greater corporate governance capacity but more substantial for SEO firms with higher free cash flow. All main findings are consistent in a number of endogenous tests, including the two‐stage least squares test, the generalized method of moments estimation, and the control of alternative fixed effects. These conclusions also passed several robustness tests such as an alternative factor model and event windows and an alternative proxy of cost stickiness.