Relationship between Conservatism and Underpricing Initial Public Offerings in Tehran Stock Exchange

Abstract

This study investigates whether and how accounting conservatism impacts on underpricing the Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the Tehran Stock Exchange. The market-adjusted abnormal return of firms for the first trading month has been taken as proxy for the underpricing. The regression analysis of 41 companies that went to the public through the IPOs during March, 2004 to February, 2012, presents results that reveal the IPOs underpricing in the Iranian market is inversely related to accounting conservatism. This implies that accounting conservatism, by more verifiability for recognition of gains and losses as well as limiting the opportunistic behavior of managers, reduces information asymmetry of issuers and other stakeholders of IPOs that leads to lowering underpricing IPOs

Keywords

• conservatism
• initial public offerings
• underpricing ipos
• market-adjust abnormal return