Venture capital backing: financial policies and persistence over time

Abstract

The present article seeks to analyze the financial policies of companies backed by Private Equity and Venture Capital funds (PE/VC). Our sample consists of firms completing an initial public offering between January 1991 and December 2000. Our hypotheses relate to the difference between VC and non-VC-backed firms in terms of financial policies and their persistence. We use four measures to evaluate the firms' financial policies: i) Cash holdings; ii) Leverage; iii) dividends out of their earnings; and iv) interest coverage. To test the four hypotheses, we run Pooled OLS regressions. The results suggest that VC-backing firms keep a higher level of cash holdings than non-VC-backed firms. This effect lasts for at least 8 years after the IPO. We show that VC-backed firms are associated with a lower level of leverage over the first 8 years after the IPO. Differently, while interest coverage is lower in the first years after the IPO, results are not persistent, even reverting in later years. Finally, we do not find statistically significant evidence of a difference between VC- and non-VC-backed firms on dividend to earnings ratio. Our results are robust across statistical methods and different methodologies.