Offer price and ownership structure: A study of shareholders in Swedish IPOs 2006–2016

This study uses the stock ownership records of Swedish firms and hand-collected Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) data to analyze the offer prices and underpricing of IPO shares and the relationship with the post-IPO ownership structure. The results show that for IPO stocks with low offer prices, individual investors hold a relatively large fraction of shares compared with IPO stocks with higher offer prices. Furthermore, for low-priced IPOs, there is a negative relationship between offer price and breadth of ownership, showing that stocks with a low price can attract more investors than stocks with higher offer prices. However, there is also a size effect, with breadth of ownership being higher for larger firms. Overall, this study shows that the offer price of an IPO firm may have a moderate effect on its post-IPO ownership structure.