Title: Pitching Intangibles

Speaker: Xingchao Gao, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Toronto

Time: 10:00-11:30, Oct 14th, 2026 (Wednesday)

Venue: Room 1007, Mingde Business Building (Zhongguancun Campus)

Language: Chinese & English

ABSTRACT:

Firms increasingly generate value from intangibles that remain largely unrecognized under accounting standards. I study how firms use disclosure to bridge this gap when raising equity. Using an LLM-based pipeline to classify intangible-related disclosure in IPO prospectuses, I provide descriptive evidence on its content, evolution, and variation. First, firms provide extensive narratives and complementary metrics related to intangibles outside the financial statements, and such disclosure has grown over time toward knowledge capital. Second, the variation is consistent with firms trading off capital-market benefits and proprietary costs in their disclosure choices. More specific intangible disclosure is associated with reduced information asymmetry with investors, but also with increased rival imitation. Finally, I exploit the SEC's testing-the-waters expansion to provide further evidence on disclosure incentives and extend the analysis to private offerings. Overall, these findings shed light on the disclosure trade-off around intangibles and inform ongoing standard-setting on intangible disclosure.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Xingchao Gao is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Accounting at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. His research examines the role of disclosure in addressing information challenges in the knowledge-based economy and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. His work has been published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, and practitioner outlets such as Responsible Investor and VoxChina.