The Asset Growth Effect in Stock Returns PDF Download

Author: Michael J. Cooper
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Languages : en
Pages : 22

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We document a strong negative relationship between the growth of total firm assets and subsequent firm stock returns using a broad sample of U.S. stocks. Over the past 40 years, low asset growth stocks have maintained a return premium of 20% per year over high asset growth stocks. The asset growth return premium begins in January following the measurement year and persists for up to five years. The firm asset growth rate maintains an economically and statistically important ability to forecast returns in both large capitalization and small capitalization stocks. In the cross-section of stock returns, the asset growth rate maintains large explanatory power with respect to other previously documented determinants of the cross-section of returns (i.e., size, prior returns, book-to-market ratios). We conclude that risk-based explanations have some difficulty in explaining such a large and consistent return premium.

Author: Marc L. Lipson
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
We consider the expanding evidence for a negative correlation between firm asset growth and subsequent stock returns with respect to two rational explanations: compensation for risk and costly arbitrage. We observe that the growth rate in total assets is the dominant asset growth rate variable in explaining the cross-section of stock returns. We show that a factor sensitivity to systematic asset growth does not generate a significant risk premium beyond the simple firm growth effect. We find that firm idiosyncratic volatility, which we use as a measure of the cost of holding a position in the stock per unit of time, explains substantial variation in the asset growth effect in the cross section of returns. Furthermore, time series patterns in alphas and factor loadings related to asset growth are associated with high idiosyncratic risk. Our findings highlight the magnitude of the impact of costly arbitrage on stock returns.

Author: Akiko Watanabe
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ISBN:
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Languages : en
Pages :

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Firms with higher asset growth rates subsequently experience lower stock returns in international equity markets, consistent with the U.S. evidence. This negative effect of asset growth on returns is stronger in more developed capital markets and markets where stocks are more efficiently priced, but is unrelated to country characteristics representing limits to arbitrage,investor protection, and accounting quality. The evidence suggests that the cross-sectional relation between asset growth and stock return is more likely due to an optimal investment effect than due to over-investment, market timing, or other forms of mispricing.

Author: Marc L. Lipson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
Recent papers have debated whether the negative correlation between measures of firm asset growth and subsequent returns is of little importance since it applies only to small firms, justified as compensation for risk, or evidence of mispricing. We show that the asset growth effect is pervasive and evidence to the contrary arises due to specification choices; that one measure of asset growth, the change in total assets, largely subsumes the explanatory power of other measures; that the ability of asset growth to explain either the cross section of returns or the time series of factor loadings is linked to firm idiosyncratic volatility; that the return effect is concentrated around earnings announcements; and that analyst forecasts are systematically higher than realized earnings for faster growing firms. In general, there appears to be no asset growth effect in firms with low idiosyncratic volatility. Our findings are consistent with a mispricing-based explanation for the asset growth effect in which arbitrage costs allow the effect to persist.

Author: Alan Guoming Huang
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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This paper investigates the driver of asset growth to explain the cross-country variation of the asset growth effect. We find that institutional restrictions on equity financing constrain firms' abilities to grow assets, and the degree of such restrictions is associated with the observed cross-country variations of the asset growth effect. Specifically, the asset growth effect is weaker in countries with more restrictions on stock issuance and buyback. In horserace tests, equity financing restrictions supersede legal system, stock market development, and information transparency in explaining the cross-country differences of the effect. We highlight our results through a comparison of two Asian countries--Korea and China--with the United States. Our results provide evidence that country financial regulations dampen certain sources of risks in asset prices.

Author: David C. Ling
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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In this paper, we examine the impact of asset growth rates on the future stock performance of 308 publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs). We observe that fast growing REITs tend to underperform slow growing REITs. However, we find evidence that the growth effect is significantly less negative for REITs selling at a premium to NAV. On the asset investment side, the negative asset growth effect is associated with growth in non-core assets. This is consistent with the notion that firms that grow outside of their competency areas are penalized by the market. On the asset financing side, we find that growth activities funded by taking on more unsecured debt are associated with negative stock performance over the next 12 months. In addition, we only observe the asset growth effect in the sub-sample of REITs that engages in equity issuance over the next 12 months. The combined evidence suggests that contemporaneous equity dilution, which has not been considered in previous studies, may provide a simple explanation for the underperformance of fast growing firms.

Author: Li, Xi
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
We document the existence of an anomalous asset growth effect globally and find that it comprises some combination of a market mispricing and some pervasive global systematic risk. To support our findings, we explore a battery of tests to include how country-level governance and market characteristics explain the cross-country differences in the effect. We also find evidence that any profits to a trading strategy based on the asset growth effect globally are somewhat diminished by high arbitrage costs.

Author: Fangjian Fu
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ISBN:
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Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Studies have shown that firm asset growth predicts cross-sectional stock returns. Firms that shrink their assets earn superior returns while firms that substantially expand their assets incur poor returns in the following years. I show that the negative asset growth often implies poor operating performance and a high probability subsequently to be delisted from the exchanges and that the high asset growth is primarily fuelled by large external financing. The seemingly superior returns of the negative asset growth portfolios are due to the omission of delisting returns. The poor returns of the high asset growth portfolios coincide with the widely-documented return underperformance of firms that have resorted to debt or equity offerings. Controlling for the delisting bias and the underperformance following large external financing, I do not find an independent effect of asset growth on stock returns.

Author: Michael J. Cooper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
We test for firm-level asset investment effects in returns by examining the cross-sectional relation between firm asset growth and subsequent stock returns. As a test variable, we use the year-on-year percentage change in total assets. Asset growth rates are strong predictors of future abnormal returns. Asset growth retains its forecasting ability even on large capitalization stocks, a subgroup of firms for which other documented predictors of the cross-section lose much of their predictive ability. When we compare asset growth rates with the previously documented determinants of the cross-section of returns (i.e., book-to-market ratios, firm capitalization, lagged returns, accruals, and other growth measures), we find that a firm's annual asset growth rate emerges as an economically and statistically significant predictor of the cross-section of U.S. stock returns.

Author: FY Eric Lam
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
We measure ex-ante expectation errors by identifying sporadic versus persistent total asset growth ex-ante. Corporate profitability of high (low) asset-growth firms remains inferior (superior) after temporary asset expansion (contraction), hence ex-ante expectation errors are high. Corporate profitability of high (low) asset-growth firms remains superior (inferior) along continual asset expansion (contraction), hence ex-ante expectation errors are low. The asset growth effect is strong when ex-ante expectation errors are high but nonexistent when ex-ante expectation errors are low. Ex-ante expectation errors remain important under value-weighting scheme and the influence is stronger when limits to arbitrage are more severe. Ex-post revision of analyst earnings forecast in an opposite direction to the change in asset size is larger when ex-ante expectation errors are higher. Ex-ante expectation errors uniformly affect return effects associated with a variety of asset change measures based on capital investment activity but they have little effect on return effects related to net working capital and external financing.