Why do firms manage their stock price levels?

•This study sheds light on managers’ decisions in determining nominal share price level.•The generalized catering hypothesis suggests that managers cater for different types of investors.•Institutional ownership premium has a significant impact on the change in share price norm.•The premium for excess institutional ownership relative to the industry affects the share price.•The findings provide a robust framework that informs managerial decision making on share price. Building on the catering hypothesis and institutional investor preference literature, we propose a generalized catering hypothesis that managers cater their share price level to different types of investor (individual vs institutional) in order to attract them, conditional on the firm’s preferences as to ownership mix. We show that an institutional ownership premium provides strong explanatory power to the change in share price norm. This evidence supports our hypothesis that managers cater their share price level to the preference of institutional investors, but only when there is substantial benefit in doing so. Further tests reveal that the premium is higher for long term than for short term investors.