| Investors’ corporate site visits is a private information acquisition activity,during which security analysts and institutional investors have a field visit to the company,have a face-to-face talk with employees and take a field tour of the office area and production workshop.The Shenzhen Stock Exchange(SZSE)has required firms listed there to disclose information related to investors’ corporate site visits on the"Interactive Website"in a timely manner starting in July 2012.Taking advantage of the regulatory requirement on site visits disclosure in SZSE,this paper is based on a hand-collected dataset of corporate site visits of the SZSE-listed firms in the year between 2013 and 2017.This paper firstly examines the relationship between investors’ corporate site visits and the cost of equity capital,and then explores the impact of information transparency and ownership property on them.The results show that:(1)The more the investors’ corporate site visits,the lower the cost of equity capital;(2)The more institutions involved in corporate site visits,the lower the cost of equity capital;(3)Compared to firms with high information transparency,increasing the frequency of investors’ corporate site visits has a greater effect on reducing the cost of equity capital in firms with low information transparency;(4)Compared to firms with high information transparency,increasing the number of institutions involved in corporate site visits has a greater effect on reducing the cost of equity capital in firms with low information transparency;(5)Increasing the frequency of investors’ corporate site visits has a greater effect on reducing the cost of equity capital at non-SOEs as compared to SOEs;(6)Increasing the number of institutions involved in corporate site visits has a greater effect on reducing the cost of equity capital at non-SOEs as compared to SOEs.This paper extends the literature in the fields of corporate site visits and the determinants of the cost of equity capital.Moreover,the conclusions of this paper will help the listed firms to deepen their understanding of investors’corporate site visits and then arrange the corporate site visits properly to achieve a win-win situation with security analysts and institutional investors. |
