Dividend payout and executive compensation: theory and evidence from New Zealand

Using a model based on Bhattacharyya (2007), we predict a positive (negative) relationship between the earnings retention ratio (dividend payout ratio) and managerial compensation. We use tobit regression to analyse data for New Zealand firms' dividend payouts over the period 1997–2015 and find results consistent with Bhattacharyya (2007). These results hold when the definition of payout is modified to incorporate both common dividends and common share repurchases. Our results indicate that corporate dividend policy among New Zealand firms is perhaps best understood by considering the dividend payout ratio, rather than the level of, or changes in, cash dividends alone.     

The Effect of Past Earnings and Dividend Patterns on the Information Content of Dividends When Earnings Are Reduced

This study pursues two objectives: first, to provide evidence on the information content of dividend policy, conditional on past earnings and dividend patterns prior to an annual earnings decline; second, to examine the effect of the magnitude of low earnings realizations on dividend policy when firms have more‐or‐less established dividend payouts. The information content of dividend policy for firms that incur earnings reductions following long patterns of positive earnings and dividends has been examined ( DeAngelo et al., 1992, 1996 ; Charitou, 2000 ). No research has examined the association between the informativeness of dividend policy changes in the event of an earnings drop, relative to varying patterns of past earnings and dividends. Our dataset consists of 4,873 U.S. firm‐year observations over the period 1986–2005. Our evidence supports the hypotheses that, among earnings‐reducing or loss firms, longer patterns of past earnings and dividends: (a) strengthen the information conveyed by dividends regarding future earnings, and (b) enhance the role of the magnitude of low earnings realizations in explaining dividend policy decisions, in that earnings hold more information content that explains the likelihood of dividend cuts the longer the past earnings and dividend patterns. Both results stem from the stylized facts that managers aim to maintain consistency with respect to historic payout policy, being reluctant to proceed with dividend reductions, and that this reluctance is higher the more established is the historic payout policy.     

Aggregate Dividend Behavior and Permanent Earnings Hypothesis

The study examines the aggregate dividend behavior of U.S. corporations based on the permanent earnings hypothesis. Using annual data of aggregate earnings and dividends from 1871–1993, I find that although managers change dividends proportional to permanent earnings changes, they make revisions with a larger percentage change in dividends than in permanent earnings. The results from the post‐war data show that firms follow a partial adjustment policy with a long‐term dividend payout target in mind and make revisions with a delay. The quarterly data analysis yields results similar to those of the post‐war annual data.     

Executive stock-based compensation and firms’ cash payout: the role of shareholders’ tax-related payout preferences

We hypothesize that the structure of executive stock-based compensation helps to align managers’ payout choices with shareholders’ tax-related payout preferences. Specifically, stock options, which are not dividend-protected, can deter self-interested executives from using dividends as a form of payout. In contrast, restricted stock, which is dividend-protected, is more likely to induce the use of dividends. Relatedly, shareholders’ preferences for dividends, which are taxed as ordinary income, can depend on the income tax consequences of dividends relative to those of long-term capital gains. To test our hypothesis, we investigate whether the exogenous changes in shareholders’ tax-related payout preferences following the 2003 dividend tax rate reduction result in predictable shifts in executive stock-based compensation and in managers’ payout choices. Consistent with our prediction, we find a positive relation between the increased use of dividends in firms’ payouts and the increased (decreased) use of restricted stock (stock options) in executive compensation, particularly for firms with a greater percentage ownership by individual investors and with lower costs associated with modifying the structure of their compensation plans. Our investigation of the role of shareholders’ tax-related payout preferences in the design of executive stock-based compensation extends the prior literature that has largely focused on the role of incentive contracts in inducing managerial effort, risk taking, and retention.     

Payout policy in the 21st century

We survey 384 financial executives and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 23 to determine the factors that drive dividend and share repurchase decisions. Our findings indicate that maintaining the dividend level is on par with investment decisions, while repurchases are made out of the residual cash flow after investment spending. Perceived stability of future earnings still affects dividend policy as in Lintner (1956. American Economic Review 46, 97–113). However, 50 years later, we find that the link between dividends and earnings has weakened. Many managers now favor repurchases because they are viewed as being more flexible than dividends and can be used in an attempt to time the equity market or to increase earnings per share. Executives believe that institutions are indifferent between dividends and repurchases and that payout policies have little impact on their investor clientele. In general, management views provide little support for agency, signaling, and clientele hypotheses of payout policy. Tax considerations play a secondary role.     

Do firms use dividend changes to signal future profitability? A simultaneous equation analysis

This paper retests the signaling hypothesis of dividends by examining whether managers change dividends to signal their expectation of earnings prospects using a simultaneous-equation approach. This approach allows us to more clearly test the earnings prospects signaling hypothesis and facilitates the control of several alternative motives that managers may have for changing dividends. We also examine the information content of dividend changes with respect to future earnings changes in the same model system. Our results show that managers change dividends to signal equity-scaled rather than asset-scaled earnings prospects. In addition, we find evidence that managers also change dividends for signaling previous earnings changes and for catering to dividend clienteles. As for the information content of dividend changes, we find that dividend changes have significant and negative impact on ROA changes. The findings suggest that if investors consistently cannot recognize the signaling purpose and find that dividend increases (decreases) are not useful in predicting favorable (unfavorable) future earnings, managers may someday give up using dividend changes to signal the earnings prospects of their firms because they cannot obtain the expected market benefits anymore.     

Forced Versus Voluntary Dividend Reduction: An Agency Cost Explanation

We examine whether the agency cost arising from shareholder‐bondholder conflict is an important determinant of the timing of dividend reduction decisions. Firms forced to reduce dividends owing to bond covenant violations experience lower earnings, more frequent losses, and greater earnings declines around the dividend reduction year than do firms that voluntarily reduce dividends. Relative to voluntary‐reduction firms, forced‐reduction firms have higher debt‐to‐equity ratios and managerial holdings. These findings coupled with the increased dividend payout ratios and lower announcement period returns suggest that financially distressed firms that anticipate poor performance have greater incentives to delay reducing dividends to avoid a wealth transfer to bondholders.     

Dividends and share repurchases during the COVID-19 economic crisis

In this article, we examine dividends and share repurchases of S&P 1500 firms during the COVID-19 crisis characterized by the stock market crash and a relatively quick stock price recovery propelled by technology stocks. We find that the great majority of firms either maintain or increase the level of dividends during the crisis period. Yet, the relation between the dividend payout and reported earnings is negative and significant. This relation also holds for other types of payouts, including share repurchases and special dividends. Moreover, we find that both forecasted and realized earnings of up to 1 year into the future are negatively associated with current dividends, implying that existing payout policies are unsustainable in the longer term. Surprisingly, the difference-in-differences test shows that firms strongly affected by the COVID-19 crisis have higher dividend payouts (relative to net earnings) compared to unaffected firms. The same test indicates that strongly affected firms significantly reduce repurchases.     

Earnings and Expected Returns

The aggregate dividend payout ratio forecasts excess returns on both stocks and corporate bonds in postwar U.S. data. High dividends forecast high returns. High earnings forecast low returns. The correlation of earnings with business conditions gives them predictive power for returns; they contain information about future returns that is not captured by other variables. Dividends and earnings contribute substantial explanatory power at short horizons. For forecasting long-horizon returns, however, only (scaled) stock prices matter. Forecasts of low long-horizon stock returns in the mid-1990s are caused not by earnings or dividends, but by high stock prices.     

Dividend policy and permanence of earnings

We examine managers’ adjustment of dividends to information about earnings. We base our analysis on a ‘permanent earnings’ model of dividend behavior, which implies that dividends are changed primarily in response to permanent changes in earnings; transitory earnings changes have little or no effect on dividends. Within the permanent earnings framework, the permanent component of earnings may be the predominant factor affecting dividend payouts, or it may be one of the important factors affecting dividends. In the former case earnings and dividends are co-integrated; in the latter they are not. Using a sample of 337 firms over the 40 year period from 1950–1989, we find the data to be strongly consistent with the permanent earnings model. We also find that the data are more consistent with a model that relates dividend and earnings changes rather than levels. Thus, we conclude that earnings and dividends are not co-integrated. This contrasts with the implicitly co-integrated (levels) dividend model of Lintner (1956), and indicates that factors other than the permanent component of earnings, such as tax policy, clientele effects, transaction costs, etc. may have a significant impact on the long-run behavior of dividends.     

The evolving relation between dividends and flexible payouts: A different evolution

We study payout by UK listed companies during 1993–2018. Regular dividends remain the dominant channel, but flexible payouts (special dividends and repurchases) have grown, and they make total payout more responsive to earnings. Flexible payouts are used to augment regular dividends: few companies pay out by flexible means only, and tests indicate that they augment rather than replace regular dividends. Comparison with US evidence shows that UK companies make greater use of dividends (including specials) in relation to repurchases, and have a greater willingness to change regular dividend per share.     

Cash dividends,stock dividends and subsequent earnings growth

This study examines the association between dividend payout ratios and subsequent earnings growth using a unique dataset on Taiwanese firms paying dual dividends. The practice of paying dual dividends, which is quite common in Taiwan, gives rise to a novel ‘balanced-dividend hypothesis’ to be addressed in this study. The main thrusts of the hypothesis are that high cash-dividend payouts may reduce agency costs, and that high stock-dividend payouts provide a signal of optimism. The empirical evidence shows that a significant positive association between dividend payout ratios and subsequent earnings growth exists only in the dual-dividend payouts sample. After further dividing the whole sample according to their cash-to-stock ratios, the significantly positive association between dual-dividend payouts and subsequent earnings growth is discernible only in the balanced-dividend sub-samples.     

Disappearing Dividends: Implications for the Dividend–Price Ratio and Return Predictability

The conventional dividend–price ratio is highly persistent, and the literature reports mixed evidence on its role in predicting stock returns. We argue that the decreasing number of firms with a traditional dividend‐payout policy is responsible for these results, and develop a model in which the long‐run relationship between the dividends and stock price is time varying. An adjusted dividend–price ratio that accounts for the time‐varying long‐run relationship is considerably less persistent. Furthermore, the predictive regression model that employs the adjusted dividend–price ratio as a regressor outperforms the random‐walk model. These results are robust with respect to the firm size.     

The Informativeness of Dividends and Associated Tax Credits

This paper investigates the informativeness of dividends and the associated tax credits with respect to earnings persistence. After confirming that dividend‐paying firms have more persistent earnings than non‐dividend‐paying firms, we show that the taxation status of the dividend is also important. Firms that pay dividends with a full tax credit attached have significantly more persistent earnings than firms that pay dividends which carry no associated tax credit. Consistent with higher levels of tax credits identifying more mature firms, those paying dividends with full tax credits have significantly less persistent losses than firms that pay dividends with only partial tax credits. Further, market pricing tests confirm that the incremental information in dividends and tax credits contributes to reductions in market mispricing of the persistence of earnings and earnings components. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications and controlling for dividend size and firm age.     

A Test of the Relative Pricing Effects of Dividends and Earnings: Evidence from Simultaneous Announcements in Japan

We study the pricing effects of dividend and earnings announcements by taking advantage of the unique setting in Japan where managers simultaneously announce the current year's dividends and earnings as well as forecasts of next year's dividends and earnings. Defining surprises as deviations from analysts' forecasts, we find that share price reactions are significantly affected by earnings surprises, especially management forecasts of next year's earnings. The information content of dividends is marginal and is restricted to announcements of next year's dividends. Consistent with Modigliani and Miller's dividend irrelevance proposition, current dividend surprises have no material impact on stock prices in Japan.     

Local Dividend Clienteles

We exploit demographic variation to identify the effect of dividend demand on corporate payout policy. Retail investors tend to hold local stocks and older investors prefer dividend‐paying stocks. Together, these tendencies generate geographically varying demand for dividends. Firms headquartered in areas in which seniors constitute a large fraction of the population are more likely to pay dividends, initiate dividends, and have higher dividend yields. We also provide indirect evidence as to why managers may respond to the demand for dividends from local seniors. Overall, these results are consistent with the notion that the investor base affects corporate policy choices.     

How Does Asymmetric Information Affect Catering Behavior?

This study examines the association between information asymmetry and payout policy, and how asymmetric information affects catering behavior. Using forecast error and forecast dispersion as information asymmetry variables, this study finds that the more information asymmetry the firms face, the less likely they will increase dividends. Meanwhile, the effects of information asymmetry dominate over those of catering incentives for managers to decide dividend policy. Finally, our empirical results demonstrate that the signaling theory holds when dividend yield is high or market underestimates the EPS of firms. In addition, companies use share repurchases as a substitute for dividend increases, and take retained earnings into account when making dividend policies.     

The accuracy of analysts' dividend forecasts around the world

We examine the link between the accuracy of consensus analysts' dividend forecasts, earnings predictability and dividend policies of firms in 39 countries from 1995 to 2004. For firms that display stronger dividend smoothing, as modeled by Lintner [Lintner, J., 1956. Distribution of incomes of corporations among dividends, retained earnings and taxes. American Economic Review 46, 97–113], there is a lower correlation between dividend and earnings forecast errors, with less of the earnings uncertainty being passed into dividend uncertainty. The link between earnings and dividend forecast errors is weaker in common-law, capital market-based countries and in countries with well-developed financial (debt and equity) markets, where firm managers have greater incentives to smooth dividends and to use dividends for signaling.     

The Differences Between Stock Splits and Stock Dividends: Evidence on the Retained Earnings Hypothesis

Abstract:  This paper investigates stock dividends and stock splits on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange (CSE), which is of interest because several of the more recent explanations for a stock market reaction can be ruled out. The main findings are that the announcement effect of stock dividends as well as stock splits is closely related to changes in a firm's payout policy, but that the relationship differs for the two types of events. A stock dividend implies an increase in nominal share capital and hence a decrease in retained earnings. Firms announcing stock dividends finance growth entirely by debt (explaining the need for an increase in nominal share capital) and retained earnings. Basically all firms announcing a stock dividend with a split factor of less than two can also afford to increase their total cash dividends permanently, at least proportionally to the increase in share capital, leading to a significant announcement effect of 4.23%. Firms announcing a stock dividend with a split factor of two or more also increase total cash dividends permanently, but less than proportionally to the increase in share capital. This leads to an insignificant announcement effect of 0.08%. These findings support a retained earnings/signaling hypothesis. For stock splits, no separate announcement effect was found when a firm's payout policy was controlled for. This lends support to the idea that a stock split per se is a cosmetic event on the CSE and is also consistent with the fact that making a stock split on the CSE is virtually cost free.     

Managerial entrenchment and payout policy: A catering effect

Agency theory suggests that entrenched managers are less likely to pay dividends. However, according to the catering theory, external pressures from investors can force managers to increase dividend payments. Hence, we test whether entrenched managers respond to investor demand for dividends and share repurchases. Using a large sample of 9677 US firms over the period 1990–2016 (i.e. a total of 80,478 firm-year observations), we test and find evidence that managerial entrenchment negatively impacts dividend payments. Our findings suggest that catering effects weaken the negative impact of managerial entrenchment on payout policy and that in firms with entrenched managers an increase in the propensity to pay dividends is conspicuous only when there is external investor demand for dividends. Our results indicate that while insiders and institutional owners might not necessarily favour dividend payments, firms respond to catering incentives when dominated by insiders but not institutional owners. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that dividend payments are a result of external pressures to reduce agency problems associated with firms run by entrenched managers.