The Effect of Dividend Policy on Market Value
UK Empirical Study

Abstract

This study tackles the relationship between dividend policy and market value of companies in the UK through three empirical models.

The aim of the first model was to test the validity of the Irrelevant Theory empirically by exploring the relationship between dividend type (cash dividend, share dividend and share repurchase), earnings (EPS) and investment policy (retained earnings per share) with the market value of a company. This is achieved through the use of annual and semi-annual data for 362 companies in different UK sectors by adopting Panel Data for the period extending from 1998 to 2007 (twenty periods), where the fixed-effect (within) regression model was used to examine this sample .

The second model examines if companies favour the investment policy dividend policy by investigating whether or not companies follow a residual dividends policy. This has been identified by following the methodology of Baker and Smith (2006), based on the calculation of Standardized Free Cash Flow (SFCF) for 590 UK companies in different sectors for the period from 1998 to 2007 by using annual data.

The third model seeks to explore managerial preferences regarding dividend type and the most important factors affecting the company management when setting dividends policy. In this respect, the importance of the following factors has been tested: the company’s market value; the financing decision; the investment decision; signaling theory; agency theory; and shareholder structure. The questionnaire methodology used for this model where it was distributed to 1319 UK companies in different sectors. The number of responses was 208 responses is equivalent to 15.77% of the total distributed).

The study arrived at a number of important results that can be summarized as follows: 1) The invalidity of the Irrelevant Theory, as the results show that there is a relationship between dividend policy and market value of a company; 2) There is a relationship between earnings, investment policy and the market value, which indicates that the dividends policy, announced earnings and investment policy work together in affecting the market value of a company; 3) UK companies, on the whole, do not adopt a residual dividends policy, implying no preference for investment policy over dividend policy, except for the two sectors banking and insurance companies where the results showed that they follow the residuals dividends policy 4) Most UK companies’ managements prefer cash dividends to other venues choices because of its easy implementation; and 5) The most important factor affecting UK companies’ managements when they set their dividends policy is shareholder structure while the least factor listed in importance is agency theory.