This paper investigates the long-run stock returns of privatization initial public offering(IPO) firms using a sample of 261 privatization IPOs from 46 countries during the period 1981-1999. We compare one- three-, and five-year holding period returns of the privatization IPOs to those of the domestic stock market indices and to those of size and size-and-book-to-market equity ratio (BM)-matched firms of respective countries. Consistent with previous studies, privatization IPOs significantly outperform their domestic stock markets in the long-run. However, they do not show any significant abnormal long-term stock performance relative to their size- or size-and-BM-matched benchmark firms. The results in the paper suggest that previous results on the long-run stock performance of privatization IPOs should be interpreted with caution. In addition, being different from private companies` IPOs, the market seems to value privatization IPO firms without much systematic bias after the IPO. This is consistent with privatization IPOs having less information asymmetry problems compared to private IPOs.