Intellectual Capital Disclosure in IPO Prospectuses: Evidence From Technology Companies Listed on NASDAQ

There is quite a number of papers, concerning Intellectual Capital itself, research on why the company should disclose the information on Intellectual Capital (IC), in which way, who is the target audience and why this information is of interest to participants of stock market. Mainly research covers official annual reporting and separate IC Statements. Much less time and attention was dedicated to IPO prospectuses IC information disclosure and even less to post-issue stock performance in connection to the disclosure. This paper extends this line of investigation. It follows the existing research conducted by Singh and Van der Zahn (2009) in the index chosen and time of observation. Although, while the academics were concentrating on Singapore exchange, the focus of this paper are the IPOs of Technology companies on NASDAQ before and after the crisis 2008. Findings from this study provide a broader, long-term image of the potential consequences of Intellectual Capital disclosure in IPO prospectuses and share price returns of Technology companies, which is of particular interest to investors due to sadly famous events of 2001. To measure the level of disclosure of Intellectual Capital, Disclosure Index is used. Post-issue stock-performance is calculated as buy-and-hold return for 500 days after listing. The sample consists of the technology companies (according to NASDAQ) that were listed on NASDAQ from 2002 to 2010. The goal of the paper is to define the relationship between the disclosure of information on Intellectual Capital and the 500-day post-issue stock performance on example of NASDAQ companies; The main objectives are to create a regression model with Intellectual Capital elements that will best possibly reflect the connection between Intellectual Capital disclosure and post-issue stock performance, to compare the results with other similar studies and to interpret the differences. The main results are: Intellectual Capital disclosure has a positive effect on post-issue stock performance; The influence of Intellectual Capital disclosure is higher for non-manufacturing firms, small companies and firms that issue American Depositary Shares.