Factors That Firms Consider When Making Dividend Policy Decisions Essay

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

Dividends should be made cumulative and issuable upon a liquidation event or an IPO. Such dividends may be converted, if the holder desires, to common shares. This will encourage management to seek a quicker exit.

When a company generates a profit, management has one of two choices: They can either pay it out to shareholders as a cash dividend, or retain the earnings and reinvest them in the business.

While some states follow surplus rule distributions, others follow balance sheet rule or percentage test. In Delaware, corporation must specify par value of share. Promissory note may be used as a payment for shares. There are some restrictions on reissuing the treasury shares. Moreover, Delaware corporations may pay dividends out of surplus (net assets exceed capital) or net profits. When calculating net assets, corporations can use any reasonable manner. For example, decreasing in assets by adding up depreciation, amortization, etc. If the surplus of current year is negative, dividends can be paid out of this year or preceding year’s profits. In New York, stockholders must pay at least par value to corporation for shares they bought. Promissory notes are unfavorable payment for shares but considerable. Treasury shares cannot be sold for any amount or form of any consideration. Additionally, dividend may be paid out of surplus, but New York corporation may do insolvency test (ability to pay debt) before declaring dividends. In California, par value was eliminated. Dividends may be paid out of retained earnings. If average interest payments is less than average earnings, the current asset must be equal to at least 125 percent of current liabilities to distribute

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.

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.

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

Once a company makes a profit, they must decide on what to do with those profits. They could continue to retain the profits within the company, or they could pay out the profits to the owners of the firm in the form of dividends. Once the company decides on whether to pay dividends, they may establish a somewhat permanent dividend policy, which may in turn impact on investors and perceptions of the company in the financial markets. What they decide depends on the situation of the

the accrual basis of accounting). Under EAS, profit sharing to employees and board of directors is recognized as a dividend

Kumar (1988) builds a model that explains dividend smoothing - one of the most salient features of dividend policy. Dividends once again signal a firm’s quality (productivity), but, since they are over invested in the firm, managers will try to under invest by underreporting a firms productivity. While there is no fully revealing equilibrium, Kumar shows that firms will tend to cluster around optimal dividend levels. Agency theory suggests that dividends can be used as a means to control a firm’s management. Distributing dividends reduces the free cash