The Dividend Decision

The Dividend Decision is a decision made by the directors of a company. It relates to the amount and timing of any cash payments made to the company's stockholders. The decision is an important one for the firm as it may influence its capital structure and stock price. In addition, the decision may determine the amount of taxation that stockholders pay.

There are three main factors that may influence a firm's dividend decision:

• Free-cash flow
• Dividend clienteles
• Information signalling

The free cash flow theory of dividends

Under this theory, the dividend decision is very simple. The firm simply pays out, as dividends, any cash that is surplus after it invests in all available positive net present value projects.

A key criticism of this theory is that it does not explain the observed dividend policies of real-world companies. Most companies pay relatively consistent dividends from one year to the next and managers tend to prefer to pay a steadily increasing dividend rather than paying a dividend that fluctuates dramatically from one year to the next. These criticisms have led to the development of other models that seek to explain the dividend decision.

Dividend clienteles

A particular pattern of dividend payments may suit one type of stock holder more than another. A retiree may prefer to invest in a firm that provides a consistently high dividend yield, whereas a person with a high income from employment may prefer to avoid dividends due to their high marginal tax rate on income. If clienteles exist for particular patterns of dividend payments, a firm may be able to maximise its stock price and minimise its cost of capital by catering to a particular clientele. This model may help to explain the relatively consistent dividend policies followed by most listed companies.

A key criticism of the idea of dividend clienteles is that investors do not need to rely upon the firm to provide the pattern of cash flows that they desire. An investor who would like to receive some cash from their investment always has the option of selling a portion of their holding. This argument is even more cogent in recent times, with the advent of very low-cost discount stockbrokers. It remains possible that there are taxation-based clienteles for certain types of dividend policies.

Information signalling

A model developed by Merton Miller and Kevin Rock in 1985 suggests that dividend announcements convey information to investors regarding the firm's future prospects. Many earlier studies had shown that stock prices tend to increase when an increase in dividends is announced and tend to decrease when a decrease or omission is announced. Miller and Rock pointed out that this is likely due to the information content of dividends.

When investors have incomplete information about the firm (perhaps due to opaque accounting practices) they will look for other information that may provide a clue as to the firm's future prospects. Managers have more information than investors about the firm, and such information may inform their dividend decisions. When managers lack confidence in the firm's ability to generate cash flows in the future they may keep dividends constant, or possibly even reduce the amount of dividends paid out. Conversely, managers that have access to information that indicates very good future prospects for the firm (e.g. a full order book) are more likely to increase dividends. According to Grullon (2002) the information value lies in the fact that a dividend increase signals a decrease in systematic risk (a decrease in discount rate), the correlation between dividend changes and earnings changes has not been proofed.

Investors can use this knowledge about managers' behaviour to inform their decision to buy or sell the firm's stock, bidding the price up in the case of a positive dividend surprise, or selling it down when dividends do not meet expectations. This, in turn, may influence the dividend decision as managers know that stock holders closely watch dividend announcements looking for good or bad news. As managers tend to avoid sending a negative signal to the market about the future prospects of their firm, this also tends to lead to a dividend policy of a steady, gradually increasing payment.

Conclusion

In a fully informed, efficient market with no taxes and no transaction costs, the free cash flow model of the dividend decision would prevail and firms would simply pay as a dividend any excess cash available. The observed behaviours of firm differs markedly from such a pattern. Most firms pay a dividend that is relatively constant over time. This pattern of behavior is likely explained by the existence of clienteles for certain dividend policies and the information effects of announcements of changes to dividends.

The dividend decision is usually taken by considering at least the three questions of: how much excess cash is available? What do our investors prefer? and What will be the effect on our stock price of announcing the amount of the dividend?

The result for most firms tends to be a payment that steadily increases over time, as opposed to varying wildly with year-to-year changes in free cash flow.

External links and references

• Capital Structure, Prof. Aswath Damodaran
• Dividend Policy, Prof. Aswath Damodaran
• Capital Structure and Payout Policies, Prof. Campbell R. Harvey
• Dividend Policy, Studyfinance.com
• Gustavo Grullon, Roni Michaely and Bhaskaran Swaminathan Are Dividend Changes a Sign of Firm Maturity? The Journal of Business Vol. 75, No. 3 (July 2002), pp. 387-424