Industry Divestiture Waves: How a Firm's Position Influences Investor Returns

Abstract

Because of the “opaque” nature of divestitures, investors face considerable uncertainty in evaluating divestiture decisions and thus may look to a firm's social context, defined in terms of the pervasiveness of divestiture activity in its industry, to infer the quality of such a decision. Specifically, we propose that a firm's position in an industry divestiture wave conveys information about whether or not managers are imitating their industry peers, which in turn will influence how investors perceive and assess the quality of the decision and its likely performance consequences. Supporting this theoretical argument, we find that the relationship between divestiture position and stock market returns exhibits a U-shaped pattern, with divestitures that occur at the peak of an industry divestiture wave generating the lowest stock market returns. We also find that industry characteristics (e.g., munificence) reinforce the effect of position in wave on investor response. Our study is the first to incorporate the role of a firm's social context, assessed in terms of the pervasiveness of an activity, as an important factor that influences how investors perceive and evaluate divestiture decisions.