Data and descriptive statistics

All financial data on IPO companies are collected from Datastream. Datastream is a financial database which contains data on financial business, stock prices and macroeconomics. The database contains more than 175 countries with a history of up to 50 years back. It contains all listed companies for the years 1999-2015 required for this paper. The Dutch IPO

company data is collected from Euronext Amsterdam. Similarly, data from the United Kingdom is collected from Financial Times Stock exchange and data from Belgium is collected from Euronext Brussels.

The original (combined) sample contained 365 observations. Some observations are excluded from the data set, since they display different characteristics compared to other IPO firms. For example, this includes lots of companies from financial or utilities sectors. This is caused by different regulations within these industries. Others were excluded due to the lack of information availability. For instance, the amount of closely held shares wasn’t available for every observation in the database. This variable couldn’t be found in any other databases, so it had to be excluded. After these exclusions, the sample contained 208 observations.

All data from the Netherlands and Belgium was published in Euro’s, but since data from the United Kingdom was published in Pounds, this had to be alternated to Euro’s.

Therefore, the historical exchange rates per day had to be exhaled from the European Central Bank (2016). Using these daily exchange rates, all the observations from the United Kingdom could be substituted to Euro’s.

The sample included numerous different industries. With regard to being able to take account for industrial effects, this study combined the smallest industry groups to the major industry groups. In this manner, dummies could be included to make the regression more valid. For instance, following from the combination of consumer services,

telecommunication and health care, the services industry became one of the dummies.

Concerning having the most reliable results as possible, the data set containing 208

15 observations had to be shortened with some outliers. Outliers increase standard errors and therefore reduce the reliability of the results. They are illegitimately included and therefore should be removed (Anscombe, 1960). Outliers are found through Stata, by creating

boxplots of all the variables and looking at z-statistics. After eliminating outliers, which had an impact considering the standard errors and significance and sign of the regression analysis, the final data set contained 202 observations. Table 1 will expose the summary statistic for the whole sample, table 2 will summarize statistics for the Netherlands, table 3 for the United Kingdom and table 4 summarizes statistics for Belgium.

Furthermore, table 5 will provide a cross-correlation table of the dependent and independent variables to test for multicollinearity. The numbers are Pearson correlation coefficients. Their range is from minus one till one, whereas the closer to one, the higher the correlation. A negative value indicated an inverse relationship to the correlated value.

There’s no reason to assume that there would be multicollinearity, since correlations between variables are low and one of the industry dummies will always be excluded from the regression.

Nevertheless, there exists criticism on this method of checking for multicollinearity since the matrix doesn’t take account for indirect correlation. Moreover, there is no unilateral indication on when there exists a multicollinearity problem. Therefore,

multicollinearity is also tested by using a variance inflation factor. The advantage of using this method is that the VIF is considered reliable. It is a widely used method to check for multicollinearity in OLS regressions. A VIF test measures how much the variance of the regression is increased because of multicollinearity. If VIF is greater than 4 or 1/VIF is smaller than 0.25, there could be a multicollinearity problem. Table 6 provides the results on the VIF-test on the independent variables. Concluding from this table, it is assumable that there exist no multicollinearity problems.

Finally, graph 1 will expose the number of IPO’s per year. The horizontal axis defines the years and the vertical axis defines the number of IPO’s. The amount of IPO’s are

separated in the specific countries, whereas the blue column represents the number of IPO’s in the Netherlands. The red column represents the IPO’s in the United Kingdom and the green column represents the number of IPO’s in Belgium. The graph shows that there seems to be a lower amount of IPO’s during times of economic crises.

16 Table 1: Summary statistics, including mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum for the combined observation (n=202).

Note: data on the summary statistics from this table is collected from Datastream.

Table 2: Summary statistics, including mean, median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum for observations from the Netherlands (n=28).

Note: data on the summary statistics from this table is collected from Datastream.

Combined N Mean Median Standard

Deviation

Minimum Maximum

Market capitalization/EBITDA (€ x1000)

202 887.17 539.30 2,759.78 -20,772.72 12,123.84

Closely held shares (%) 202 0.04 0.03 0.06 0.00 0.42

Total Assets (€ x1000) 202 6,190.43 419.94 24,000 2.99 203,000

Leverage (%) 202 34.92 31.35 32.25 0.00 184.47

Sales growth (%) 202 64.86 13.01 307.65 -73.09 3,298.61

Return on sales (%) 202 12.62 16.52 69.50 -551.78 245.42

Price-to-sales ratio 202 1.30 0.05 13.98 0.00 198.37

Netherlands N Mean Median Standard

Deviation

Minimum Maximum

Market capitalization/EBITDA (€ x1000)

28 18.29 12.09 89.40 -272.51 325.63

Closely held shares (%) 28 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.00 0.11

Total Assets (€ x1000) 28 8,437.58 262.95 293.00 2.99 145,000.00

Leverage (%) 28 26.50 21.79 26.10 0.00 83.87

Sales growth (%) 28 103.55 15.68 251.44 -59.01 969.77

Return on sales (%) 28 19.66 14.44 65.71 -173.72 245.42

Price-to-sales ratio 28 0.16 0.01 0.68 0.00 3.64

17 Table 3: Summary statistics, including mean, median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum for observations from the United Kingdom (n=139).

Note: data on the summary statistics from this table is collected from Datastream.

Table 4: Summary statistics, including mean, median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum for observations from Belgium (n=35).

Note: data on the summary statistics from this table is collected from Datastream.

United Kingdom N Mean Median Standard Deviation

Minimum Maximum

Market capitalization/EBITDA (€ x1000)

139 1,283.51 978.82 3,253.34 -20,772.72 12,123.84

Closely held shares (%) 139 0.04 0.03 0.06 0.00 0.42

Total Assets (€ x1000) 139 6,261.73 544.00 25,200.00 6.02 203,000.00

Leverage (%) 139 36.71 29.95 35.31 0.00 184.47

Sales growth (%) 139 64.95 13.32 351.55 -73.09 3,298.61

Return on sales (%) 139 16.04 16.98 59.72 -551.78 133.64

Price-to-sales ratio 139 0.40 0.06 1.37 0.00 11.27

Belgium N Mean Median Standard

Deviation

Minimum Maximum

Market capitalization/EBITDA (€ x1000)

35 8.23 7.00 26.86 -29.35 142.40

Closely held shares (%) 35 0.05 0.03 0.07 0.00 0.31

Total Assets (€ x1000) 35 4,111.33 131.51 12,000.00 9.08 62,400.00

Leverage (%) 35 34.59 38.39 21.86 0.00 77.13

Sales growth (%) 35 33.58 8.45 73.94 -45.43 350.38

Return on sales (%) 35 -6.61 15.51 100.93 -312.25 148.40

Price-to-sales ratio 35 5.80 0.01 33.51 0.00 198.37

18 Table 5: Cross correlation table of the dependent and all independent variables of the regression analysis.

Note: ** and * indicate significance at 5% and 1%, respectively.

Table 6: VIF test on the independent variables to check for multicollinearity.

VALUE TA SG ROS MANU SERV IND CHSHARES

19 0

5 10 15 20 25

Netherlands United Kingdom Belgium Graph 1: The number of IPO’s per year, separated between the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Belgium.