Capital Investments and Stock Returns

Sheridan Titman, K.C. John Wei and Feixue Xie

No 9951, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Firms that substantially increase capital investments subsequently achieve negative benchmark-adjusted returns. The negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is shown to be stronger for firms that have greater investment discretion, i.e., firms with higher cash flows and lower debt ratios, and is shown to be significant only in time periods when hostile takeovers were less prevalent. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that investors tend to underreact to the empire building implications of increased investment expenditures. Although firms that increase capital investments tend to have high past returns and often issue equity, the negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is independent of the previously documented long-term return reversal and secondary equity issue anomalies.

JEL-codes: G1 G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn and nep-fin
Note: CF
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Published as Titman, Sheridan, K. C. John Wei and Feixue Xie. "Capital Investments And Stock Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2004, v39(4,Dec), 677-700.

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