Dividend Policy: Evidence From Public Listed Companies In Malaysia
This paper examines the dividend policy for public listed companies in Malaysia by identifying the financial and performance factors that influence the dividend policy of Malaysian listed companies. It also studies the different characteristics of dividend-paying companies and non dividend-paying companies. Besides that, it also tests whether the dividend policy of Malaysian public listed companies contain information as suggested by signalling theory. We find that there are more dividend-paying companies than non dividend-paying companies in Malaysian public listed companies over 2002-2005. This is true for most industries during that period. In years 2002 – 2003, dividend distribution of Malaysian public listed companies is shown to be volatile. The trend becomes upward after 2003 till 2005. This paper concludes there are different characteristics between dividend-payer and non-payer for Malaysian public listed companies. The former are companies that have relative lower growth opportunities, lower firm risk and lower firm leverage as compared to non dividend-paying companies. They tend to achieve higher profitability and are bigger, in term of revenue, as compared to non dividend-paying companies. Profitability, as measured by ROA and ROE, shows stronger positive linear relationship with dividend yield and dividend payout ratio as compared to growth opportunities factor and firm size. On the contrary, firm leverage and firm risk show negative relationship with both dividend yield and dividend payout ratio.
With regards to the testing of signalling theory on the determinant of dividend policy for Malaysian public listed companies, we find that dividend payment has a positive correlation with the past earnings, little or no correlation with current earning, and is negatively correlated with future earnings. The finding suggests that dividend policy for Malaysian public listed companies is influenced by their past performance more than their current and future performances. The dividend policy for Malaysian public listed companies is rigid and sticky as managers are reluctant to cut or avoid omit dividend even when the performance of the companies are deteriorating. As for limitations of this study, this study observes the dividend-paying companies and non dividend-paying companies according to boards and industries. However, we do not
study further whether there is any relationship between industry and dividend policy. It is commonly perceived that there is an industry norm for dividend policy, and the company’s dividend policy might be greatly influenced by such macro factor. It is recommended that the relationship of dividend policy and industries’ macro factors to be analysed in future study.