Jas Bahadur Gurung

The aim of this paper is to assess the views of market participants concerning the institutional investors’ role in implementing book-building pricing of IPOs as Nepal seeks to implement it. A total of 125 market participants were approached for data collection using a structured questionnaire that took a six-month period from January to June 2020. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze the collected data. The study found that the role of institutional investors in the prevailing stock market is brutally meager because of the restrained regulatory provisions. Market participants opined that institutional investors play a vital role in developing the stock market and executing book building. Implementation of book building demands a rigorous amendment in the existing regulations that allow institutional investors to enter and play in the market. A precise classification and definition of the potential roles of institutional investors are essential so that the application of the building pricing mechanism could be expected to be more effective. Market participants believed that the active participation of institutional investors will help lure manufacturing and real sector companies, trading houses and hotels into the capital market for public offerings. Issue managers, portfolio managers, share registrars, and stockbrokers agree that the role of institutional investors is inevitable in implementing book-building pricing.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
This paper aims to examine the operating performance of firms after new issues. Using financial data of 43 initial public offering (IPO) firms from 2013/14 through 2022/23 with 215 observations, operating performance is evaluated. Both the independent samples t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to compare firms’ operating performance between pre- and post-issue periods. Results reveal that operating performance after IPO for all indicators in different time windows from Year t+0 to t+3, has been negative compared to Year t–1. Sector-specific analysis shows that the decline in operating performance is significantly higher in the microfinance sector compared to hydropower firms. Underpricing has a positive effect on operating performance except in a few cases. Hot issue dummy has a negative, insignificant effect on both measures of operating performance, viz., operating return on assets and operating cashflow to total assets, for the first two-time windows, and it weakly supports the windows of opportunity hypothesis. On the other hand, the influence of promoter ownership on operating performance was positive except in few cases, which is contrary to the agency theory. Further, the results show that operating performance has a weaker influence on long-run IPO returns. Thus, it is proposed that IPO firms should strive to intensify their activities and effectively utilize capital raised through IPOs, considering the net present value of the projects to achieve better firm performance.

Acknowledgments
This paper is prepared based on my ongoing PhD work. So, I would thank my supervisors, Professor Dr. Keshar J. Baral and Professor Dr. Dilli Raj Sharma, for their mentoring during my PhD. I also extend a deep gratitude to the University Grants Commission Nepal for providing me PhD Fellowship with the Award No. PhD-78/79-Mgmt-02. I never forget my friend Ramkrishna Chapagain, a research scholar at Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, for assisting me with several inaccessible resources for this study.