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The author is founder and managing director of Trivariate Research

When companies move their headquarters from one U.S. state to another in the hope of a more favorable legal environment, it can attract a lot of attention. But the impact may not be that severe – at least not in terms of what matters to their investors: the return on their company shares.

Over the past year, several large U.S. companies have relocated or announced plans to change their headquarters for reasons ranging from governance disputes to costs.

Delaware remains the preferred state for companies to set up their business in. Over the past 25 years, the proportion of the 2,000 largest US companies by market capitalization that are registered in Delaware has risen from just under 55 percent to 70 percent today. There are good reasons for this. The laws in this “first state” of the USA are well known and well negotiated.

But some companies are finding reasons to leave the state. In February, Tesla announced its move from Delaware to Texas after a court in the US’s leading corporate headquarters state voided Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation package. Musk later also announced the relocation of the privately held SpaceX headquarters from Delaware to Texas. Likewise, his brain chip implant company Neuralink moved its headquarters from Delaware to Nevada.

TripAdvisor, along with other publicly traded companies, cited regulatory burdens and operating costs as reasons for moving from Delaware to Nevada. Proximity to the Vegas Golden Knights may also play a role for Cannae Holdings, as the National Hockey League team is owned by CEO Bill Foley.

Geographical location appears to be a determining factor for most companies in which state they are based. Delaware has a wide spread of companies, with 77 percent of companies located in five sectors – consumer goods, financials, healthcare, industrials and technology.

But in other states there are even bigger differences: For example, 84 percent of all companies registered in California are financial or utility companies, 71 percent of companies registered in Maryland are in the real estate sector, and 60 percent of all companies in Texas are either financial or industrial companies.

But does the state where the company is based really matter? We analyzed the long-term performance of stocks in each state to see if there are any meaningful differences between states.

The volatility-adjusted performance across states is not statistically significant. The highest average performance of stocks in a single state was in Massachusetts, the lowest average performance was in New York. The highest volatility was in Nevada, the lowest in Virginia. But overall, there is no statistical significance in the performance of stocks by their state of incorporation.

We then analyzed whether a firm that changes its state of incorporation (excluding those where the change was the result of an acquisition) had significantly different stock performance before or after the announcement of the planned state change.

There have been 92 such examples over the past 15 years that were not related to transactions. To be accurate in our analysis, we looked at the announcement date – not the closing date – to ensure that any change in a stock’s performance related to an announced change in state of incorporation was not already “priced in” before the actual change.

The answer is no. We looked at the average performance of stocks of companies moving from one status to another – adjusted for their sensitivity to general market movements, or beta. Both before and after the announcement of a change, the stocks did not deviate from the overall market in a statistically significant way.

Some investors have posited that it is potentially risky to own stock in a company that has recently changed states. For example, one concern cited is that such changes could make it harder for activists to join or remain on a company’s board. Undesirable activist board members can be removed much more easily in Nevada than in Delaware. The concern of some investors is that this would not be in the best interest of shareholders overall, as existing board members could prevent potentially beneficial changes. On the other hand, activists often advocate for things that don’t work.

Even if stock performance doesn’t really differ between states, moves can still be justified. Companies should move where they see advantages, such as in the areas of cost, regulation and talent retention.