Abstract

Conceptual background and hypotheses

Effects of unanticipated changes in the cloud ratio on excess stock returns

Effects of unanticipated changes in the cloud ratio on idiosyncratic risk

Moderating effect of unanticipated changes in market maturity

Moderating effect of unanticipated changes in advertising intensity

Methodology

Estimation results

Hypotheses tests

Sensitivity analyses

General discussion

Theoretical contributions

Managerial implications

Notes

References

Author information

Ethics declarations

Additional information

Appendix A Examples of calculating the cloud ratio

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About this article

Abstract

Moving into cloud computing represents a major marketing shift because it replaces on-premises offerings requiring large, up-front payments with hosted computing resources made available on-demand on a pay-per-use pricing scheme. However, little is known about the effect of this shift on cloud vendors’ financial performance. This study draws on a longitudinal data set of 435 publicly listed business-to-business (B2B) firms within the computer software and services industries to investigate, from the vendors’ perspective, the shareholder wealth effect of transitioning to the cloud. Using a value relevance model, we find that an unanticipated increase in the cloud ratio (i.e., the share of a firm’s revenues from cloud computing) has a positive and significant effect on excess stock returns; and it has a negative and significant effect on idiosyncratic risk. Yet these effects vary across market structures and firms. In particular, unanticipated increases in market maturity intensify the positive effect of moving into the cloud on excess stock returns. Further, unexpected increases in advertising intensity strengthen the negative effect of shifting to the cloud on idiosyncratic risk.

Over the past few years, the computer software and services industries have witnessed a rapid growth in cloud computing, with the global public cloud market expected to reach nearly $364 billion by 2022, up from $242 billion in 2019 (Gartner, 2020). Cloud computing is a technological innovation that grants customers on-demand access to hosted computing resources made available on a pay-per-use pricing model (Chen & Wu, 2013; Mell & Grance, 2011). Shifting to the cloud has dominated discussions among information technology (IT) firms because it involves substantial changes to the components of a vendor’s marketing mix (see Moorman et al., 2018).

First, moving to the cloud amounts to a paradigm shift in the nature of a vendor’s offerings: from providing IT as a product to delivering computing functionality as a service (see Cusumano et al., 2015). In particular, cloud solutions are delivered in a hosted environment operated by the vendor—unlike the in-house IT infrastructure deployed internally by customers (Fazli et al., 2018; Ma & Seidmann, 2015). Hosting arrangements provide computing resources as on-demand services; they neither constitute a license purchase nor provide customers with contractual rights to take possession of the underlying IT assets (Chen & Wu, 2013). Second, transitioning to the cloud entails a fundamental shift in the vendor’s pricing strategy. Specifically, cloud offerings are typically billed on a pay-per-use basis; hence, they disrupt software firms’ revenue streams hitherto characterized by lump-sum, up-front licensing fees (Breznitz et al., 2018; Burgelman & Schifrin, 2014). Third, moving into the cloud entails a profound shift in the firm’s distribution strategy. In fact, the Internet-based delivery model in cloud arrangements establishes a direct online channel that can bypass traditional third-party distributors (e.g., software resellers and integrators).