Capital investments and stock returns

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

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

761 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)677-700
Number of pages24
JournalJournal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis
Volume39
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2004
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Accounting
  • Finance
  • Economics and Econometrics

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