Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift Among Newly Issued Public Companies in U.S. Capital Markets

Abstract

Post-earnings-announcement drift is the tendency for a stock’s cumulative abnormal returns to drift in the direction of an earnings surprise for several weeks following an earnings announcement. I show that the drift is significantly more pronounced when investigating the unexpected earnings of initial public offerings in comparison to the aggregate U.S. stock market. My results suggest that this disparity is attributable to firm-specific characteristics inherent in initial public offerings and the extraordinary growth numerous young firms experience. Further, I postulate that drift patterns following earnings announcements for IPO firms differ from those observed in prior PEAD research.