Debt Issuances, Capital Structure Changes and Stock Return Performance

Debt financing is a major source of corporate financing in many emerging countries including Malaysia. However, the knowledge on shareholders wealth created from debt financing decision and sources of the wealth creation is scant and inconclusive. The scarcity of literature is more noticeable in emerging market environment and market where Islamic debt securities coexist with conventional debt securities. In response to this knowledge gap, this study attempts to examine the short and long run stock return performance of debt security issuers as well as the determinants of the long run stock return performance. Samples of 136, 165, 145, and 126 bond issues during January 2001 to October 2009 are used for analyzing short run announcement effects, as well as one, two, and three year performance, respectively. Using event study method, this study finds that the shareholders of bond-issuing firm experience significantly positive wealth creation around the announcement of the issues. Value weighted average of cumulative abnormal return and buy and hold abnormal return
of the portfolio of debt issuers as well as the intercept of Fama-French three factor model is used for estimating the long run performance. The significance of buy and
hold return is tested by implementing bootstrapped skewness adjusted, and heteroscedasticity and serial correlation consistent t-statistics. Results show that the shareholders of bond issuing firms experience significant long run performance in three-year period after the issue. Among the significant determinants, capital structure change, growth opportunity, and ownership concentration influence long
run performance positively. The effects of growth opportunity and ownership concentration are significantly moderated by capital structure changes. Some variables only affect the long run performance when the debt issuance is associated with capital structure change. Among them, choice of Islamic debt, debt tax shield. and free cash flow which influence the long run performance negatively, while firm size influences positively. As a whole, this study finds evidence for partial applicability of trade off and agency costs theory in explaining long run wealth creation by the debt financing decision in Malaysia. The results of this study indicate that large companies and high ownership concentration companies should issue debts for meeting their financial requirement. Large companies can enjoy the benefits of issuing debts, such as interest tax saving, without facing severe financial distress costs, while high ownership concentration companies that issue debts can retain control on the companies' activities and overcome usage of free cash flows for private benefits.