۱- Introduction

۲- Hypotheses development

۳- Data and variables

۴- Results

۵- Additional analyses

۶- Endogeneity

۷- Conclusion

References

Abstract

We study whether the presence of major customer-supplier relationships affects a supplier’s cost of debt. Using 5,704 U.S. corporate bonds issued from 1983 to 2013, we find that the cost of debt tends to be reduced when there are major customer-supplier relationships. This finding is robust to alternative measures of major customer-supplier relationships, subsample analyses, a propensity score matched sample analysis, and an instrumental variables approach. The results are consistent with the certification hypothesis, where a major customer serves as a monitoring and certifying entity for its supplier, thereby reducing information asymmetry between the supplier and its creditors. Moreover, the supplier’s cost of debt is further reduced if the issuing supplier has higher asset specificity, whereas suppliers in more competitive industries do not incur the benefits of the validation.

Introduction

Customer-supplier relationships are known to influence many financial activities of a firm. There are two major potential mechanisms through which a major customer-supplier relationship might affect a supplier firm’s cost of debt: the concentrated credit risk hypothesis and the certification hypothesis. According to the concentrated credit risk hypothesis (e.g., Becchetti and Sierra, 2003; Kale and Shahrur, 2007; Banerjee et al., 2008), a firm with major customer-supplier relationships often has to undertake relationship-specific investments, which will in turn lead to higher concentrated credit risk and higher cost of debt. In contrast, the certification hypothesis (Johnson et al., 2010; Hui et al., 2012; Cen et al., 2016) suggests a monitoring and certifying channel through which major customer-supplier relationships affect the value of the supplier. According to this hypothesis, customersupplier relationships facilitate major customers’ incentives on monitoring their suppliers, thereby reducing information asymmetry between the suppliers and their creditors, resulting in a lower cost of debt for the suppliers.1 Using various measures of major customer-supplier relationships, we find that in the corporate bond market, major customersupplier relationships reduce a supplier’s cost of debt, which is consistent with the certification hypothesis (Johnson et al., 2010; Cen et al., 2016). Given that an average issuing amount of our sample is $449 M, our regression analysis implies that issuing suppliers with at least one major customer can save approximately $462 K relative to otherwise identical firms at the time of the corporate bond offering. The results are robust to controlling for issuespecific variables and firm-related characteristics. We further test the certification hypothesis by analyzing the differential effects of asset specificity and product market competition on the relationship between the presence of major customersupplier relationships and the cost of debt. The transaction cost theory (e.g., Coase, 1937; Titman, 1984; Titman and Wessels, 1988) argues that a firm’s customers incur switching costs if the supplier is liquidated. These costs are especially high if the supplier’s assets are more specific. According to the certification hypothesis, major customers have higher incentives to monitor their suppliers that have higher asset specificity. Thus, the suppliers experience more benefits from monitoring and certification.