Return Premium of Financial Distress and Negative Book Value: Emerging Market Case

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The purpose of this paper is to examine a financial distress premium in the emerging market. A risk-return trade-off of negative book equity (NBE) and distress firms is empirically analyzed using data from the Stock Exchange of Thailand. This research employs Ohlson’s (1980) bankruptcy model as a measurement of distress risk. The results indicate that distress firms outperform solvent firms in the Thai market and deny distress anomaly often found in the developed market. Fama-Frech (1993) three-factor model and Carhart (1997) four-factor model verify the existence of a distress premium in the Thai capital market. Risk-seeking investors demand greater compensation for bearing risks of distress firms’ going concern. This paper provides fresh evidence that default risk is a significant explanatory factor in pricing stocks in the emerging market. Also, this study sheds light on the role of NBE firms in asset pricing. Most studies eliminate NBE firms from their sample. However, NBE firms yield superior average cross-sectional returns, albeit with higher volatility. Investors are rewarded with distress risks associated with NBE firms. The outperformance of NBE firms is statistically significant when compared to the overall market. The NBE premium disappears when factoring size, value, and momentum in time-series analysis.