What Is the Point of the Equity Market?
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Marketing material for professional investors and advisers only What is the point of the equity market? April 2018 Stock markets were traditionally a venue for companies to raise money to Duncan Lamont Head of Research finance growth. But the number of listed companies has collapsed in many and Analytics parts of the western world, suggesting that markets perform this function less and less. Easier access to alternative sources of financing alongside the increased cost and hassle of a public listing are all partly to blame. Savers and policymakers should all be concerned about the implications. All is not lost, however. Equity markets are thriving in some parts of the world and even where they appear not to be, they continue to serve an economic purpose, albeit one that is different to the original blueprints. We have come a long way since the first financial exchange with wider social and economic benefits. Regulators are not was established in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1531, although rather blind to these features. The UK Financial Conduct Authority than shares, this was a venue where promissory notes, bonds (FCA) has singled out primary markets as playing a “crucial and commodities changed hands. It wasn’t until early the role in supporting prosperity and providing investment next century, when the Dutch East India Company made the opportunities”1. Regulators around the world, including innovation of issuing its backers with paper shares, which in the US, UK and EU, have all conducted studies aimed at investors in turn could trade between each other, that we saw identifying the barriers to effective primary markets. the first signs of something like the modern day stock market. Over the ensuing centuries stock markets have become an However, if fewer companies value a stock market listing, integral part of our financial plumbing. this leads to the provocative question which titles this paper: what is the point of the equity market? We focus on the The initial purpose of the stock market from a company’s US and UK but also contrast them with elsewhere. Some perspective was to provide it with a means of raising markets have experienced similar trends to the US and UK capital to finance its future endeavours. From an investor’s but others have been diametrically opposed. We unpick perspective, the market provided liquidity by allowing them some of the potential explanations why and find that, even to sell their shares to other investors at a transparent price. in the US and UK, the equity market continues to serve a These primary functions have since expanded and a stock purpose, albeit not exactly the same as originally envisaged. market listing provides many more benefits to companies and investors today (Figure 1). However, it also comes with Figure 1: The stock market cost/benefit trade-off many more costs for companies and a greater burden than – the company perspective our forbearers could have imagined. Access to The decision to list or not depends on whether the expected capital to grow business benefits outweigh the costs and for many successful Litigation companies, this is no longer a straightforward question Access to risk to answer. Things have become so bad that in the US, the capital to repair balance sheet IPO Governance number of listed companies has declined by almost 50% costs burden Use shares as Raise public since 1996. There has also been a collapse in the number of currency: M&A companies choosing to IPO from an average of over 300 a profile Ongoing public Provide company costs year in the 1980-2000 period to only 108 a year since (Figure liquidity/an Use shares exit for existing as currency: 2). The UK market has experienced a similar fall from grace. Regulatory risk Unwanted investors incentives/ remuneration transparency This is not just of philosophical interest. A thriving public Loss ofcontrol equity market brings a number of benefits, not least Short termism the fact that it is the most accessible and cheapest way for ordinary savers to participate in the growth of the corporate sector. The transparency provided by a public market is also a double-edged sword. While companies Source: Schroders may find it burdensome, it enables management and corporate practices to be held to account more readily, 1 www.fca.org.uk/publication/corporate/business-plan-2016-17.pdf 1 The pace of de-equitisation has been savage Figure 2: Freefalling listed company count… The number of companies listed on the UK main market 000 000 has fallen by over 70% since the mid 1960s and both the 9 .5 UK and US markets have witnessed a rough halving in 8 4 numbers since the mid-1990s (Figure 2). These dramatic 7 3.5 declines have been driven by both a slump in companies -6% choosing to IPO (Figure 3) and greater numbers choosing 6 3 to delist than list (Figure 4). 5 -71% 2.5 Furthermore, even those companies that are listing are 4 -53% 2 choosing to hold off for longer before doing so – the average 3 1.5 age of companies on IPO in the US has increased from eight US (LHS 2 1 years in the 1980-1999 period to 11 years since. A similar U (RHS pattern of delayed listing can be seen in the UK. They are 1 0.5 also much larger than in the past. For example, the average 0 0 market capitalisation of companies on the UK main market 1966 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011 2016 has increased fourfold since the number of companies Data to end 2017. UK figures are for main market only. Source: London Stock peaked in 1996. The characteristics of public markets have Exchange, Schroders, World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI) and World shifted decidedly towards older, larger businesses. Federation of Exchanges. The WDI cover listed domestic companies and foreign companies which are exclusively listed on an exchange. Investment funds, unit trusts, What makes this more of a riddle is that the pool of IPO and companies whose only business goal is to hold shares of other listed companies, such as holding companies and investment companies, regardless of their legal status, candidates has continued to grow. The US has created over are excluded. A company with several classes of shares is counted once. 21,000 new companies on average per year since 1996, a figure which more than doubles if the 2008-11 crisis years are Figure 3: …caused by a dramatic reduction in IPOs… excluded. UK new company growth has been even higher, but the headline figures mislead. Net of closures, over two 800 300 million companies were established in the UK between the US (LHS 700 start of 2000 and 2017, including annual growth of 131,000. U (RHS 250 Of those, however, 89% have no employees at all or only 600 a single employee-owner. The number of companies with 200 500 50 or more employees has increased by a far more modest 410 a year. Regardless, the decline in the number of listed 00 150 companies does not indicate a lack of entrepreneurialism. 300 New companies continue to be created at a steady rate. It 100 is however a sign that companies are choosing to finance 200 50 themselves differently than in the past. 100 0 0 Cheap debt has been winning hands down 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 For more established businesses, with interest rates so US IPO data is on consistent basis to WDI data. UK data covers all admissions to low, debt finance has increased in attractiveness relative to the LSE main market. This includes IPOs, re-admission placings and introductions. equity. If a company needs capital, it makes sense to raise This approach has been taken to permit the longest possible analysis. Genuine IPO it where it can be done most cheaply. Debt has been the numbers are slightly lower in the UK. Data to end 2017. Source: Jay Ritter, University of rational choice, subject to constraints on leverage and long- Florida, London Stock Exchange, and Schroders. term affordability. Figure 4: …and de-listings exceeding new listings In more extreme cases where there are no operational umber of new listings minus de-listings financing requirements, companies have been raising debt specifically to buy back (i.e. retire) equity. This has 600 U been especially the case in the US. Apple is the best-known 00 example, having raised and spent tens of billions of dollars in US this way over recent years, but it is not alone. In total, around 200 a third of US share buybacks announced in the 12 months to November 2017 were financed by new borrowings2. 0 -200 Less well appreciated is that debt is also significantly cheaper than equity in upfront fundraising cost terms. -00 The average fee payable to an underwriter on IPO in the US is 7% of the amount raised, more than 10 times the -600 3 underwriting fees on debt . Although costs are much -800 lower in Europe, typically less than half US levels, the same 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 approximate ten times uplift holds for underwriting fees on equity compared with corporate bonds. Data to 2016. Source: US: The US listing gap, Craig Doidge, Andrew Karolyi and René M. Stulz, Columbia Business School, July 2015, Credit Suisse. UK: London Stock Exchange. Finally, the tax deductibility of interest payments also counts in its favour. All told, it is not hard to see why debt has been popular, although its glamour may start to fade if interest rates and borrowing costs rise.