Good growth, bad growth: Market reaction to capital raising for REIT expansion

When a firm issues security to finance its growth, how does the market react and do investors differentiate between good and bad growth? By manually reading the intended use of proceeds of each security offering of U.S. REITs during 2000–2020, we classify whether the proceeds are used for expansionary or other purposes and analyze whether security offerings that are used to finance sub-optimal growth matter for shareholders' wealth. Adopting an event study method, we find that the expansionary use of proceeds does not affect shareholders' wealth following a debt offering announcement. However, when we distinguish good growth from bad growth, we find that debt financing used for good growth is associated with an increase in shareholders' wealth (+1.734% abnormal return in the 5-day event window) and debt financing used for bad growth is associated with a decrease in shareholders' wealth (−0.563% abnormal return in the 5-day event window). For equity offering announcements, on average, neither the expansionary use of proceeds nor the nature of growth significantly affects shareholder wealth.