Long-run performance of U.S. seasoned equity offerings after the year 1995

Abstract

This paper questions if the anomaly in the events of seasoned equity offerings has remained significant after it was first documented and analyzed in the year 1995. I find that U.S. domestic firms issuing primary and combined SEOs underperform in the three years after issuance between 1970 and 1994, while the same underperformance is not documented thereafter. This would suggest that the current assessment of the SEO anomaly could be biasedly influenced by early SEO events conducted before the year 1995. Moreover, this paper provides strong evidence that the anomaly is closely related to the incorrect risk adjustment of the Fama-French three-factor model.