An Empirical Study on the Impacts of the Unlocking of the Stocks Issued Through Private Placements Based on the Statistical Analysis of Excess Returns and Announcement Effects

Abstract

Since 2000, the Chinese securities market has introduced private placement refinancing programs from foreign markets. Private placement has gradually emerged as an important refinancing method for domestic listed companies in China. However, any emerging financing means has some drawbacks. In the case of the newly introduced private placements, its manifestation in the Chinese market is the significant fluctuations of stock prices before and after the expiration dates of the lockup periods for stocks issued through private placement and announcements of private placement plans (disclosure plans, receiving approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, etc.) and even significant declines, resulting in most investors suffering unexpected losses. Scholars abroad have conducted several systematic and extensive studies on private placement. However, owing to the short history of private placement practice in China and its unique features, research on this subject is limited. With its gradual maturity, the private placement practice has gradually emerged as important means of financing consideration for listed companies in China. Therefore, in-depth research on the effects of private placements becomes essential.From 2013 to 2016, the domestic private placement market was wisely popular. By the end of 2016, the number of private placement projects, the amount of investment, and number of unlocked stocks had reached the peak. The release of large amounts of money significantly impacted the market. Investors observed the impact of the unlocked stocks on excess returns. Moreover, the company’s announcement before and after the lock-in period expiration has a psychological effect on investors, thus affecting their investment behaviors. Therefore, this empirical study focuses on the two types of impacts: excess returns and announcement effects. This study selected the data of unlocking through private placement of A shares in 2013–2016 as the sample and adopted statistical methods to analyze changes in excess return over the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index of 10 days before and after the lock-in period expiration date of private placements. It is found that the negative impact of unlocking on the stock price is mainly reflected before unlocking, especially in the 5 trading days before unlocking. The negative impact is not significant after unlocking. Then, by grouping comparison, it is shown that for stocks with different market capitalizations, company ownership structures, and percentages of unlocked stocks over total shares outstanding, there are significant differences in the cumulative excess returns before and after the lock-in period expiration dates. For further verification, this study applies multiple regressions on the influencing factors of the cumulative excess return of stocks before, during, and after unlocking, indicating that the level of market capitalization of the stock, company ownership structure, and the percentage of unlocked stock indeed exert a negative impact. Therefore, it is confirmed that investors can formulate the best trading strategy before and after unlocking, based on factors such as market capitalization, company ownership structure, and percentages of unlocked stock. Finally, a case study of Huangshan Tourism is carried out to further support the conclusion of the empirical analysis.