In: Accounting
It has been shown that in the absence of taxes and other market imperfections firm value will be unaffected by dividend policy. Explain the logic behind this conclusion. Next, describe three real-world factors that may cause one dividend policy to be preferable to another.
The irrelevance theory by Miller & Modigliani have opined that price of Equity share of a firm depends solely on its Earning Power and is not influenced by the manner in which earning is split between dividend and retained earnings. They observed that under conditions of Perfect Capital Market, Rational Investors, absence of tax discrimination between dividend income and capital appreciation given the firms investment policy, its dividend policy have no influence on the Market price of the share. The Goverment imposing freeze on dividend according to MM Theory will have no impact on share price (Wealth of Shareholders). The shareholders will be deprived of dividend income but will be compensated by increase in the value of their shares. Capital Investment in real terms wont be affected by this action as it is neither in favour nor against Capital Investment. However firms will be raising lesser amount from the market as a part of requiremment of Capital for further investment will be available in the form of Retained Earnings.
The 3 real world factors that may cause one dividend policy preferable to other:-
a) Shareholders need cash to meet their household requirement so they expect annual reward for their investment
b) Income is as important as Capital Gain. Other form of Investment such as bank deposits, bonds etcfetch cash returns, therefore investors will shun company which do not pay appropriate dividend.
c) If Return on Equity is less than Cost of Equity, Shareholders will suffer in case of no payment of Dividend. Tax considerations sometimes may also be relevant. Foe example dividend might be tax free and Capital Gain might be taxable