50 Policios, Clarisse Q.ACCTG 404BDividend Policy The dividends are decided by the firms board of directors and paid to the shareholders who are registered on the record date. Types of dividends:1. Cash Dividends: These Dividends are paid in cash, usually quarterly.2. Companies can declare both regular and extra dividends. Regular dividends usually remain unchanged in the future, but extraordinary or special dividends are unlikely to be repeated.3. Stock dividend: Shareholders receive new stock in the corporation as a form of a dividend. Like a stock split, the number of shares increases, but no cash changes hands.Both cash and stock dividends reduce the value per share.4. An alternative way to distribute cash is with share repurchases. The firm buys back its own shares. This can be done: On the Open Market Tender offer Buying stock from major shareholders.

Regularities observed in dividend policy:(Results found by Lintner (1965) and Fama (2001))1. Firms have long-run target dividend payout ratios.2. Mature companies with stable earnings usually have a higher dividend pay-out ratio than growth companies.3. Managers focus more on dividend changes than in absolute amounts.4. Transitory changes in earnings usually do not affect dividend pay-outs.5. Only long-term shifts in earnings can be followed by changes in dividends.6. Managers are reluctant to change divided pay-out ratios.

Why do companies pay dividends?If investors have to pay higher taxes on dividends than in capital gains, then firms that pay dividends should have a higher cost of equity than firms that do not pay dividends. Thus, why do firms pay dividends?

One argument to justify the payment of dividends is that dividends are cash in hand, while capital gains are cash in the bush. Capital gains to be received in the future should be riskier than the dividends received today. Think about investor YES who invested in a firm that pays dividends and investor NO who holds shares of a firm that does not pay dividends. Is investor YES better off than investor NO? Investor YES receives the cash now, but what is she going to do with this cash? She might want to spend it, but investor NO could also sell her shares and spend the proceeds. If investor YES wants to invest the money she will face the appropriate level of risk.

It is important to remember that the value of the firm is equal to future cash flows discounted at the appropriate discount rate. There is no reason to think that the future cash flows will change with the dividend policy, and under the M&M assumptions, there is no reason to believe that the payment of dividends will change the discount rate.

DIVIDEND POLICY THEORIES (By Munene Laiboni)Dividend policy theories are propositions put in place to explain the rationale and major arguments relating to payment of dividends by firms. Firms are often torn in between paying dividends or reinvesting their profits on the business. Even those firms which pay dividends do not appear to have a stationary formula of determining the dividend payout ratio. Dividends are periodic payments to holders of equity which together with capital gains are the returns for investing in a firms stock. The prospect of earning periodic dividends and sustained capital appreciation are therefore the main drivers of investors decisions to invest in equityDividend Irrelevance Theories:1. The Modigliani and Miller TheoremModigliani and Miller in 1961 rattled the world of corporate finance with the publication of their paper: Dividend Policy, Growth, and the Valuation of Shares in the Journal of Business. They proposed an entirely new view to the essence of dividends in determining the future value of the firm. The M&M theorem holds that capital gains and dividends are equivalent as returns in the eyes of the investor. The value of the firm is therefore dependent on the firms earnings which result from its investment policy and the lucrativeness of its industry. When a firms investment policy is known (its industry is public information), investors will need only this information to make an investment decision.The theory further explains that investors can indeed create their own cash inflows from their stocks according to their cash needs regardless of whether the stocks they own pay dividends or not. If an investor in a dividend paying stock doesnt have a current use of the money availed by a particular stocks dividend, he will simply reinvest it in the stock. Likewise, if an investor in a non-dividend paying stock needs more money than availed by the dividend, he will simply sell part of his stock to meet his present cash need.Assumptions of the Modigliani and Miller modelModigliani and Miller pinpointed certain conditions which must hold for their hypothesis to be valid:a) The capital markets are perfect, i.e. investors behave rationally, information is freely available to all investors, transaction and floatation costs do not exist, and no investor is large enough to influence the price of a share.b) Taxes either do not exist or there is no difference in the tax rates applicable to both dividends and capital gains.c) The firm has a fixed investment policy.d) There is no uncertainty about the firms future prospects, and therefore all investors are able to forecast future prices and dividends with certainty and one discount rate is appropriate for all securities over all time periods.CritiqueThe validity of the Modigliani and Miller theory is highly dependent on two critical assumptions, which unfortunately are not tenable in the real world. The theory assumes a world in which transaction costs and taxes are absent. In real sense, it is not possible to have an economy in which these two aspects are absent.2. The residual theoryThe residual theory holds that dividends paid by firms are residual, after the firm has retained cash for all available and desirable positive NPV projects. The gist of this theory is that dividend payment is useless as a proxy in determining the future market value of the firm. As such, the firm should never forego desirable investment projects to pay dividends. Investors who subscribe to this theory therefore do not care whether firms pay dividends or not, what they are concerned with is the prospect of higher future cashflows which might lead to capital appreciation of their stocks and higher dividends payouts.CritiqueThe residual theory has been criticized as having no empirical support, but its just an illustration of logic which is all too obvious for corporate decision makers. Firms tend to meet the financing needs of their growth strategies before paying anything out to shareholders and hence a theory stating so would simply be stating the obvious.Dividend Relevance Theories:1. The Gordon / Lintner (Bird-in-the-Hand) TheoryThe bird-in-the-hand theory, hypothesized independently by Gordon (1963) and by Lintner (1962) states that dividends are relevant to determining of the value of the firm. In a popular common stock valuation model developed by Gordon, The determinants of the value of a firms cost of equity financing are the dividends the firm is expected to pay to perpetuity, the expected annual growth rate of dividends and the firms current stock price.The dividend yield and the future growth of the dividends provide the total return to the equity investor. This model insists that dividend yield is a more important measure of the total return to the equity investor than the future growth rate of the dividends (which is the rate at which the net earnings and the capital gains of the firm will grow at in the future). Future growth, and hence capital gains cannot be estimated with accuracy and are not guaranteed at all as firms might lose even their entire market value in the stock exchange and go bankrupt.If a firm does not pay dividends therefore, its forward looking market value is severely affected by the uncertainty surrounding the possibility of the investors ever booking the capital gains.Assumptions of the Bird-in-the-Hand theorya) This theory is based on a number of assumptions, as enumerated below:b) The firm is an all equity firm, i.e. it has no debt in its capital structure.c) No external financing is available and consequently retained earnings are used to finance any expansion of the firm.d) There are constant returns which ignores diminishing marginal efficiency of investment.e) The firm incurs a constant cost of capital.The Walter Model:Walter (1963) postulated a model which holds that dividend policy is relevant in determining the value of a firm. The model holds that when dividends are paid to the shareholders, they are reinvested by the shareholder further, to get higher returns. This cost of these dividends is referred to as the opportunity cost of the firm (the cost of capital),kefor the firm, since the firm could use these dividends as capital if they were not paid out to shareholders.Another possible situation is where the firm does not pay out dividends, and they invest the funds which could be paid out as dividends in profitable ventures to earn returns. This rate of return,r, for the firm must at least be equal toke. If this happens then the returns of the firm is equal to the earnings of the shareholders if the dividends were paid. Thus, its clear that if r, is more than the cost of capital ke, then the returns from investments is more than returns shareholders receive from further investments.Walters model says that if rkethen the investment opportunities reap better returns for the firm and thus, the firm should invest the retained earnings. The relationship between r and keare extremely important to determine the dividend policy. It decides whether the firm should have zero payout or 100% payout.Assumptions of Walters modela) Retained earnings are the only source of financing investments in the firm, there is no external finance involved.b) The cost of capital,keand the rate of return on investment,rare constant i.e. even if new investments decisions are taken, the risks of the business remains same.c) The firms life runs to perpetuity.d) Basically, the firms decision to give or not give out dividends depends on whether it has enough opportunities to invest the retain earnings i.e. a strong relationship between investment and dividend decisions is considered.Critique of the Bird-in-Hand and Walters HypothesesBecause the structural underpinnings and implication of the Bird-in-Hand and Walters theories are similar, they can be jointly critiqued. Although these models provide a simple framework to explain the relationship between the market value of the share and the dividend policy, they have some unrealistic assumptions.The assumption of no external financing apart from retained earnings, for the firm make further investments is not really followed in the real world.The constant r and keare seldom found in real life, because as and when a firm invests more the business risks change.Subsidiary Hypotheses of Dividend Relevance3. The Tax-Preference TheoryThe M&M assumption of a perfect capital market excludes any possible tax effect. It has been assumed by Modigliani and Miller that there is no difference in tax treatment between dividends and capital gains. However, in the real world taxes exist and may have significant influence on dividend policy and the value of the firm. In general, there is often a differential in tax treatment between dividends and capital gains, and, because most investors are interested in after-tax return, the influence of taxes might affect their demand for dividends.The tax-preference hypothesis suggests that low dividend payout ratios lower the cost of capital and increase the stock price. By extension, low dividend payout ratios contribute to maximizing the firms value. This argument is based on the assumption that dividends are taxed at higher rates than capital gains. In addition, dividends are taxed immediately, while taxes on capital gains are deferred until the stock is actually sold. These tax advantages of capital gains over dividends tend to predispose investors, who have favorable tax treatment on capital gains, to prefer companies that retain most of their earnings rather than pay them out as dividends, and are willing to pay a premium for low-payout companies.Another important tax consideration is that in an estate situation; where an heir is entitled to shares after the death of a benefactor, no capital gains taxes will be due from the heir in such a situation.The Agency HypothesisThe assumption of a perfect capital market under the dividend irrelevance theory implies that there are no conflicts of interests between managers and shareholders. In practice, however, this assumption is questionable where the owners of the firm are distinct from its management. In these cases managers are always imperfect agents of shareholders and managers interests are not necessarily the same as shareholders interests, and therefore they do not always act in the best interest of the shareholders.Shareholders therefore incur (agency) costs associated with monitoring managers behavior, and these agency costs are an implicit cost resulting from the potential conflict of interest among shareholders and corporate managers. The payment of dividends might serve to align the interests and mitigate the agency problems between managers and shareholders, by reducing the discretionary funds available to managers (Rozeff, 1982).The Signaling HypothesisAnother hypothesis for why M&Ms dividend Irrelevance theory is inadequate as an explanation of financial market practice is the existence of asymmetric information between insiders (managers and directors) and outsiders (shareholders). M&M assumed that managers and outside investors have free, equal and instantaneous access to the same information regarding a firms prospects and performance. But managers who look after the firm usually possess information about its current and future prospects that is not available to outsiders.This informational gap between insiders and outsiders may cause the true intrinsic value of the firm to be unavailable to the market. If so, share price may not always be an accurate measure of the firms value. In an attempt to close this gap, managers may need to share their knowledge with outsiders so they can more accurately understand the real value of the firm. Historically, due to a lack of complete and accurate information available to shareholders, the cash flow provided by a security to an investor often formed the basis for its market valuation (Baskin and Miranti, 1997).In this way dividends came to provide a useful tool for managers in which to convey their private information to the market because investors used visible (or actual) cash flows to equity as a way of valuing a firm. Many scholars also suggest that dividends might have implicit information about a firms prospects. Even M&M (1961) suggest that when markets are imperfect share prices may respond to changes in dividends. In other words, dividend announcements may be seen to convey implicit information about the firms future earnings potential. This proposition has since become known as the information content of dividends or signaling hypothesis. According to the signaling hypothesis, investors can infer information about a firms future earnings through the signal coming from dividend announcements, both in terms of the stability of, and changes in, dividends. However, for this hypothesis to hold, managers should firstly possess private information about a firms prospects, and have incentives to convey this information to the market. Secondly, a signal should be true; that is, a firm with poor future prospects should not be able to mimic and send false signals to the market by increasing dividend payments.Thus the market must be able to rely on the signal to differentiate among firms. If these conditions are fulfilled, the market should react favorably to the announcements of dividend increase and unfavorably otherwise (Ang, 1987, and Koch and Shenoy, 1999).As managers are likely to have more information about the firms future prospects than outside investors, they may be able to use changes in dividends as a vehicle to communicate information to the financial market about a firms future earnings and growth. Outside investors may perceive dividend announcements as a reflection of the managers assessment of a firms performance and prospects. An increase in dividend payout may be interpreted as the firm having good future profitability (good news), and therefore its share price will react positively. Similarly, dividend cuts may be considered as a signal that the firm has poor future prospects (bad news), and the share price may then react unfavorably. Accordingly, it would not be surprising to find that managers are reluctant to announce a reduction in dividends.Lintner (1956) argued that firms tend to increase dividends when managers believe that earnings have permanently increased. This suggests that dividend increases imply long-run sustainable earnings. Lipson, Maquieira and Megginson (1998) also observed that, managers do not initiate dividends until they believe those dividends can be sustained by future earnings.Dividends are considered a credible signaling device because of the dissipative costs involved.The Clientele Effect HypothesisSince most of the investors are interested in after-tax returns, the different tax treatment of dividends and capital gains might influence their preference for dividends versus capital gains. This is the essence of the Clientele effect. For example, investors in low tax brackets who rely on regular and steady income will tend to be attracted to firms that pay high and stable dividends. Some institutional investors with major periodic cash outflows also tend to be attracted to high-dividend stocks. On the other hand, investors in relatively high tax brackets might find it advantageous to invest in companies that retain most of their income to obtain potential capital gains, all else being equal. Some clienteles, however, are indifferent between dividends and capital gains.Empirical Evidence on Dividends:

1. Firms tend to maintain a steady dividend policy. Firm do not like to reduce dividends, and they will only increase dividend payouts if they are sure that will be able to maintain them in the future.2. Companies that announce an increase of dividends or that they are initiating the payment of dividends are viewed positively by the market with an increase in the price of the stock.3. To the contrary, firms that announce dividend reductions experience a drop in value around the announcement date. 4. The evidence on the presence of clienteles is ambiguous.

The Principal Conclusion for Dividend Policy

The dividend-irrelevance theory, recall, with no taxes or bankruptcy costs, assumes that a company's dividend policy is irrelevant. The dividend-irrelevance theory indicates that there is no effect from dividends on a company's capital structure or stock price.

MM's dividend-irrelevance theory assumes that investors can affect their return on a stock regardless of the stock's dividend. As such, the dividend is irrelevant to an investor, meaning investors care little about a company's dividend policy when making their purchasing decision since they can simulate their own dividend policy.