My final sample includes, firms. I measure abnonnal levels of reporting beginning with the first financial reports after the issue Ball and Shivakumar
challenge the use of the first annual report after the IPO for the analysis and argue that the last annual report before the IPO should be used In the Appendix I provide the timeline of the IPO and discuss the arguments for which set of Reebok
easytone shoesreports should be used. IPO Finns Classification into Groups I identify members of each group as follows Sciencebased firms are those with a threedigit SIC code of or a fourdigit SIC code of. This group consists of
companies. Since there is no SIC code for Internet firms, I use the same list of Internet companies, as in Demers and Joos complemented by firms from Jay Ritter’s website. Discount Reebok
ShoesThe final list includes Internet firms. The tcchnologybascd group is made up of firms in threedigit industries identified by Francis and Schippcr as high technology industries. I omit firms classified as sciencebased or
Internet firms but include other nonhightech industries with intensive RD expenses, mainly scientific instrument developers. The final list includes, companies. The remaining IPO firms make up the assetsinplace group, which includes firms in
manufacturing, retail, construction, health services, and other industries. With. linns, this group is the largest. Panel A of Reebok ZigtechTable I reports the
distribution of IPOs by group ami year. It can be seen that the number of firms going public began an upward trend in lJl and peaked in. Although the IPO activity subsided a bit after this year, it stayed at a high level until. The composition of
firms has changed Reebok High TopWomen Reebok Shoesdramatically over time, with
technologybased and Internet firms increasingly dominating the IPO market in and. If indeed as I find later discretionary reporting differs across the groups, an analysis ofthe entire sample has the potential to reach different conclusions for
different periods if the composition of type of IPO firms changes, even if there is no change in their discretionary behavior. Panel B reports some of the characteristics of each of the four groups There arc substantial differences in almost all
ofthe reported parameters, supporting the notion that the Reebok
outletmotivation to apply accounting discretion might vary across the groups The science based firms have the lowest sales and are overwhelmingly unprofitable. Those firms go public at a relatively young
age and are also the least leveraged. As those firms develop scicnccbascd products, they employ few tangible assets and invest much more than any other group in RD Bccausc it takes a long time for those firms to become profitable, and because there
is a high degree of uncertainty about their future success, almost all sciencebased firms rely on VC Reebok Zigfuelfunding prior to going public The technologybased finns arc more Cheap Reebok Zigtechmature when issuing equity, with more than of them reaching profitability while still enjoying high rates of
sales growth The assetsinplace group is and of Thecompanies are already profitable. The Internet firms arrive at the market at the youngest age, usually after being funded by VCs.