Dividends Policy and Common Stock Prices

The dividend policy has grown over the years. This may be so that the company projects itself as a less risky share and thus also gaining investors faith. The investors buy its shares and thus increase its demand. This helps to gives positive signals to the investors signalling that the company is stable and can generate earnings steadily. This hypothesis is gains standing from the dividend hypothesis theory.

When a company decides to pay dividends, it has to be careful on how much it will be given to the shareholders. It is of no use to pay shareholders dividends

George C. Philippatos and William W. Sihler, 'Models of Dividend Policy', Financial Management (Allyn and Bacon), 228-229

Since the emergence of the so-called irrelevance theorem by Miller and Modigliani (1961), many corporations are puzzled about why some firms pay dividends while others do not. They were the first to study the effect of dividend policy on the market value of firms by assuming that there are no market imperfections. Miller and Modigliani (1961) proposed that divided policy chosen by a firm has no significant relationship in as far as the market valuation of the firm is concerned. They went further to explain that; the shareholders wealth remains unchanged irrespective of how the firm distributes it income because the firms’ value is rather determined by their investment policies and the earning power of its assets. They further stated that the opportunity to earn abnormal returns in the market does not exist, that is, owners are entitled to the normal market returns adjusted for risk.

Dividend Policy | -Pay out dividend to shareholders in profitable period | -100% plowback to reinvest in the business |

In practice, dividend policy will be affected by taxes as tax rates for different categories of investors will differ. Also, a firm’s dividend policy is perceived by the financial markets to be a signaling mechanism. A cut back in dividends may signify that the firm perceives tough

The fact that shareholders are taxed twice through this repayment methodology infers that dividends are not their repayment technique of choice. Furthermore, paying out cash reserves through dividends also has the effect of both reducing the company’s assets and also inhibited the company’s ability to fund future growth as Dividends reduce the company’s retained earnings.

Based on the financing needs, as above dividends would be additional stretch on company finances

Dividends are subjected to higher tax rate compare to capital gain increased due to share buy-back. This discourages shareholders from desire to receive high dividends in place of higher capital gain as share values increase. A comparison is made below between the proposed capital structure and dividend policy.

The dividends that stockholders receive and the value of their stock shares depend on the business’s profit performance. Managers’ jobs depend on living up to the business’s profit goals.

Though stocks have statistically delivered higher returns in the long term compared to bonds, bond prices are less volatile. The dividends paid out on stocks are uncertain and depend on the distributable profits of the company, the company’s investment plans and cash needs for the same, and other such factors. On the other hand, bonds generally make a pre-specified interest payout to all bondholders periodically, thereby ensuring an assured, known cash-inflow in the hands of a bond-holder. Further, on maturity of the bond, a pre-determined principal amount is paid out by the issuer to the bondholder, to purchase back the bond. Hence, a bondholder who holds the bond to maturity, knows exactly how much he /she will receive both by way of interest as well as principal on maturity. This is completely untrue for stocks, where neither the dividend flow nor the capital appreciation is predictable with certainty.

A dividend is a usually distributed in cash form to stock holders of a corporation approved by the board of director. It may also include stock dividend or other forms of payment. A stock dividend represents a distribution of additional shares to common stockholders. Dividends are only cash payments regularly made by corporations to their stockholders.

While conducting the analysis of EMI group’s dividend policy, one factor that stood out to us was the clientele effect. The clientele effect shows us who holds most of our outstanding shares. High tax-bracket individuals would prefer zero-to-low dividend payout to save on taxes. Low tax-bracket individuals would prefer a low-to-medium dividend payout, which gives them additional income while helping them save on taxes. An investing corporation would prefer a higher dividend payout because if they own a significant amount of shares, say 1 million, the income stream from that dividend would provide the company with more monetary resources while benefitting from tax exemptions. So before setting a dividend policy for EMI group, we must first

To increase and maximize the wealth/value of shareholders, it is necessary that the company is competitive in their market and can reliably “earn a considerable return on its investments above their cost of capital” (Doyle, 2000). The increasing rates of return of well performing companies attract new investors who invest money to become shareholders. These outside funds from investors are essential for growth of businesses and the expansion into new markets. Measurements of generated shareholder returns over a certain time period deliver the company useful information on whether their objectives have been achieved or should be new adjusted (Atrill, 2009).

The first objection is related to the fact that this is a totally new approach concerning dividend policy, and nobody can predict what is going to happen. We consider that this may have positive effects on share prices, especially taking in consideration that it will stabilise the market price of the company.