Анализ результативности краудфандинг инвестиций

“In what to invest?” resembles a question that requires answers on a daily basis for institutional and professional investors. The question both simple and complex provides the incentive to reevaluate options that are revealed regularly, thus seeking the opportunity with the highest potential.
It is equally important to consider the implications of investments opportunities from both investor and acquirer sides. Some may have a more evident impact on the investors prosperity, such as fund investments, pie investments, deposits or government bonds. There are some incentives, which have a more sophisticated impact on the acquirer side of the deal. It can be: easing the capital acquisition as crowdfunding possibilities, gaining a higher sum through venture capital funds or individuals, getting an early stage financing with a professional advices with Business Angel investments. Despite all of the mentioned forms of investments represent opportunities to invest and generate capital for various entities, there by no means equal: by returns and by risk imposed on the participating investors, however, they can all be regarded as investment opportunities.
The number of choices for investment is vast, with many more emerging as the time passes on. New opportunities however, are hard to grasp at first, as they propose a new ways to make money or generate capital. Crowdfunding, in this sense is the youngest investment opportunity emerged just before the 2012 boom in popularity. Even though, it provides a good opportunity for businesses to attract the early stage financing capital, growth capital or money for later stage enterprise development, it is yet to be completely understood in terms of opportunities provided to investors.
Crowdfunding could be deemed an actively developing source of finance and investment, but it had to start somewhere. First instance of modern crowdfunding is attributed to Vrian Camelio with his idea of ArtistShare, which was launched in 2003 (Freedman D. and Nutting M. 2015). Ever since its appearance, crowdfunding has developed, introducing different forms: peer-to-peer lending, reward-based crowdfunding, donation-based crowdfunding and investment based or equity crowdfunding etc. In spite of wide variety of practices that involve crowdfunding, knowledge about factors that apply to growth of value of private equity is a must. Moreover, the familiarity with existing research is drastically important as to understand what measurements and findings were already presented, in conjunction with risks that are associated
with crowdfunding investments. For the purposes of this research equity crowdfunding will be
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looked at, as traditionally investments are made for a promise of return generation, equity crowdfunding does align with such statement. (Signori A. and Vismara S. 2016)
Further, investments in equity crowdfunding are done in a form of donations that lead to the acquisition of share stake in the target firm. The offered share stake in the end is divided among all participating investors with regards to amount contributed. Therefore, investors are presented with an opportunity to generate returns later selling their stake in the company, much like public stock market, however, more risky, as symmetry in available information is vast as well as liquidity of equity crowdfunding investments is not on par with public shares.
This, in turn, leads to the research question:
What factors of target companies, during the crowdfunding campaign, may facilitate an increase in share price for firms in the future?
Due to the asymmetry of the information, however, it is less evident as to what to look for, for a potentially beneficial1 investment. Some of the generally adopted procedures for publicly traded companies could prove useful for the analysis. On the other hand, equity crowdfunding has been looked at from a perspective of firms, their financing needs and their success, that was derived as continuation of operation (Hornuf L., Schmitt M. and Stenzhorn E. 2017). The investors’ side of the transaction, in terms of returns generated and investment performance, has been neglected. Therefore, in order to address this issue, the aim of this research is to conduct a performance analysis of crowdfunding investments.
It can prove very difficult, as it is yet to be revealed what factors affect the performance of such investment. Thus, leading to several goals that would need to be met in order to achieve the aim of this research:
– To present the review of crowdfunding investment.
– To identify equity crowdfunded firms’ characteristics that signal of the investment
opportunity.
– To justify the selection of a financial performance indicator in informationally
asymmetric environment.
– To conduct an empirical study for identification of relationship of company
characteristics and share price changes within a year from equity crowdfunding campaign.
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This term is associated with an investment, which generates realizable returns for participating contributors within
a period of time. In equity crowdfunding, firms offer equity for funds, since majority of enterprises are private,
liquidity risks associated with private equity are in effect.
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– To draw conclusions and formulate recommendations based on the results of the conducted research.
This work will be structured in the same manner as goals above.
First chapter will address crowdfunding practice as a whole and outline basic concepts. In this part, types of crowdfunding will be discussed involving reward-based, donation-based and equity-based practices will be outlined and explained with examples. The chapter will then proceed with types of investors, which are eligible to participate in such practices, outline and their characteristics. Finally, in this section equity crowdfunding as an investment opportunity will be discussed.
Second chapter outlines factors that different investors look for in equity crowdfunding and justification of selected financial performance indicator. It will start with campaign process outline with factors that investors consider during the public investment stage. Further, post- campaign outcomes are presented with significance of revaluation instances outlined. It is then, followed by information asymmetry discussion in conjunction with private investors’ criteria for equity investments. The financial performance indicator concludes this chapter.
Third chapter represents the empirical analysis of this research. It starts with hypotheses statement, followed by model and variables description. Then this section describes sample acquisition along with descriptive statistics. Hypotheses testing and acquired results discussion furthers the discussion and concludes.
The research has been conducted on a sample of companies that, in a period from 2011 to 2019, acquired financing through equity crowdfunding campaigns. Data acquired from: Companies’ House – the United Kingdom’s database for various enterprises that provides free access to reports of mentioned firms; Crowdcube – crowdfunding platform in possession of a saved past equity crowdfunding campaigns; Amadeus, by Bureau Van Dijk – international database of small and medium enterprises.
Main findings of this paper, provides evidence for investors in equity crowdfunding, as to what characteristics of business pay closer attention to, such as, average investment during the equity crowdfunding campaign, size of the board within a company, number of patents and CEO being a shareholder within a company of operation, all of which have a positive impact on probability of appreciation of the investment value for equity crowdfunding contributors. Additionally, it creates more questions due to be answered for further research.