UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS UNDERSTANDING A BEHAVIOUR OF DIVIDEND PAYOUT POLICY IN VIETNAM FROM VARIOUS FINANCIAL MODELS BY DANG HUU LOC MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, MARCH 2015 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS UNDERSTANDING A BEHAVIOUR OF DIVIDEND PAYOUT POLICY IN VIETNAM FROM VARIOUS FINANCIAL MODELS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS BY DANG HUU LOC Academic Supervisor: Dr. VO HONG DUC HO CHI MINH CITY, MARCH 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could not finish this thesis without assistance, guidance, and encouragement of people surrounding me. Therefore, I would like to express my appreciation to those contributions. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my academic supervisor, Dr.
Võ Hồng Đức, for his guidance, encouragement and useful recommendations during the time of implementing this study. Besides my supervisor, I would like to express a deep gratitude to all the lecturers at the Vietnam – Netherlands Program. Especially, I am grateful to Assoc. Nguyễn Trọng Hoài, Dr.
Phạm Khánh Nam and Dr. Trương Đặng Thụy who facilitate me to finish my research. I would like to thank my friends for their helps during the courses as well as in the thesis writing process. Last but not the least; I am indebted to my parents: Đặng Thanh Liêm and Nguyễn Thị Ngoan, who always love unconditionally and support me spiritually every time I need.
HCMC, March 2015 Đặng Hữu Lộc ABBREVIATIONS FE Fixed effect GLS Generalized least square MM Miller and Modigiliani Model 1 The partial adjustment model Model 2 The Partial adjustment model under an adaptive expectations hypothesis Model 3 The partial adjustment model under a rational expectations hypothesis Model 4 The earnings trend model OLS Ordinary least squares PCSE Panel corrected standard errors RE Random effect SOA Speed of adjustment ABSTRACT This study is conducted to examine and understand a behavior of dividend payout policy at Vietnam’s listed firms for the period from 2007 to 2013. In doing so, the four well known models are adopted, known as: (i) the partial adjustment model, (ii) the partial adjustment model under an adaptive expectations hypothesis (the Waud model), (iii) the partial adjustment model under a rational expectations hypothesis, and (iv) the earnings trend model. Each of the models is briefly summarized below for the convenience of the readers. The first model considers the dividend behavior as a partially adjustable process to the target dividend.
The current profit will mainly determine the target dividend through constant desired payout ratio. This model is to provide some evidences in terms of the reluctance in changing dividend and the speed of dividend adjustment. The institutional ownership variable is also embedded into the model to investigate its impact on dividend policies. However, it was argued that the target dividend should be explained mainly by the long-run expected earnings instead of current earnings (Harkins and Walsh, 1971).
The adaptive expectations model is employed to determine the long-run expected earnings. This expectation bases on the hypothesis that human can learn from the past experience and apply for life. Accordingly, the model which is integrated by both partial adjustment (Model 1) and adaptive expectation explains better dividend policies (Lee et al. This new model is also called as the Waud model and known as Model 2 in this study.
Through this model, the responsibility of managers to change dividend as well as the relationship between the institutional shareholders and dividends are tested. Robert Lucas and Thomas Sargen, criticized that the adaptive expectations hypothesis adopted in Model 2 is unrealistic because it purely bases on the past experiences and disregards available information to managements. Therefore, they propagated a hypothesis which is known as rational expectations. This hypothesis states that managers are rational to optimize their forecasts which are incorporated current values and available information into the process of forming expectations.
The partial adjustment (Model 1) and rational expectations to consider two dividend characteristics as the Waud model, to be known as Model 3. As the last model attempted in this study, Model 4, the earning generating process is assumed to follow a random walk with trend. This assumption is consistent with the view from Fama and Babiak. Accordingly, any change in the dividend payout policy will include two parts: (i) the first part is from full adjustment of the expected change of earnings; and (ii) the second part is from partial adjustment of the remainder of earnings.
This model is known as Model 4 in this study. The three hypotheses have been developed and tested in this empirical study, one of its first kind in Vietnam: (i) Firms are more reluctant to decrease the dividend than to increase the dividend; (ii) The speed of adjustment in dividends for Vietnam market is very flexible and higher than for developed markets such as Australia, Austria, Germany, Sweden, and United Kingdom; and (iii) the absence of institutional ownership reduces significantly dividends. Key findings in this empirical study reveal that three above hypotheses are plausible in the case of Vietnam. First, the empirical results reveal that managers are more afraid of cutting dividends than raising dividends.
Second, the listed firms in Vietnam are very flexible to change the dividend policies. Third, the absence of institutional shareholders in the firms will significantly decrease the level of dividend payouts. Fourth, the findings also confirm that the adaptive expectations hypothesis is more appropriate than the rational expectations hypothesis in explaining the dividend behavior for the emerging markets, in particular for Vietnam, regardless of the presence or absence of the institutional ownership in a firm.3 The structure of study .1 Dividend and characteristics .4 The relationship between dividend policy and institutional ownership .4 Summary of empirical evidence .1 The partial adjustment model .2 The Partial adjustment model under an adaptive expectations hypothesis (The Waud model) .3 The partial adjustment model under a rational expectations hypothesis .4 The earnings trend model (ETM). 24 SAMPLE, VARIABLES AND ECONOMETRIC ANALYSES .1 Dividend per share.
30 DATA DESCRIPTIONS AND RESULTS. 37 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .1 A brief summary of the four models adopted. Problem statement The first stock market in Vietnam was established in Ho Chi Minh City in 2000. Initially, there were only two companies listed: Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Joint Stock Corporation (REE) and Saigon Cable and Telecommunication Material Joint Stock Company (SAM), with a small market capitalization of 270 billion VND.
It has been quiet in the Vietnam Stock market for a long time. However, the stock market was really booming in 2006 on all three trading floors: Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE), Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX) and the Over-The-Counter market (OTC). So far, there are 760 listed firms with the market capitalization of 52 billion USD. In fact, the capitalization of the Vietnam stock market reaches 32% GDP of Vietnam in 2014.
Listed firms play a more and more important role in the Vietnamese economy. As such, it is important to understand key characteristics of listed companies in Vietnam, in which decisions to pay dividend have attracted attention from academics and practitioners. From an interdisciplinary perspective, dividend policy has long been captivating economists as the major puzzle of corporate finance, so a great deal of effort has been spent on unraveling this subject. A well-known theorem introduced by Modigliani and Miller (1961) argued that dividend policy is irrelevant to value of a firm.
This view is considered under the assumptions of a perfect market. However, practice always deviates from the theory due to the existence of market imperfections such as taxes, transaction costs, agency problem, and information asymmetry. To assess the influence of dividends in Germany, Amihud & Murgia (1997) considered a sample of 200 German firms to conclude that dividend change play a significant role in future prospects of firms. The reason is that a change in payout may provide information about management’s confidence in the future and so affect the stock price (Breadley, Myers & Allen, 2011, p.
In the case of the Austrian firms, dividend also has a negative correlation with investment (Gugler, 2003). Although there are still many controversies surrounding this issue, no one can deny that dividend policy has been considered as one of the most crucial decisions in corporate financial management. 1 Dividend payout policy is even more important in the emerging market and Vietnam market is one of them. Due to asymmetric information, changes in dividend were considered as a signal about the company’s prospects in the future (Short, 2002).
Especially, it influences substantially shareholders who often plan and expect stable future cash flows for retirees, pension funds and insurance companies. In fact, on January 20th 2014, Decision No4/2014 was promulgated to approve the establishment of Voluntary Pension Fund. This decision will pave the way for vibrant fund market in near future. In relation to asset valuation, multiple models forecasting stock price in the long run is based on dividend.
The models present a necessity to understand why companies practice and change dividend policies. Moreover, the highly profitable companies that do not pay dividends usually get the backlash from shareholders. Therefore, it is necessary to understand dividend behavior for the Vietnam market in this study. The development of stock market has also associated with the development of the institutional investors.
Institutional investors play an important role not only in corporate control but also in creating liquidity for the market. Smith (1996) argued that the institutional shareholders are the resource of monitoring management and lead to changes of governance structures and performance were targeted. At the end of 2013, the institutions invested approximately 5 billion USD into the Vietnam stock market. Moreover, 86% listed firms in 2013 was in existences of institutions owning 5% or more of equity in a company.
Thus, it is stated that institutional investors affect significantly the policies of firms, including dividend policies, but there are not any researches to address how institutional shareholders influence on this policy in the case of Vietnam. For this reason, this study discusses the relationship between dividends and institutional ownership from the period of 2007-2013. Research objectives This study is conducted to meet the following two research objectives. First, this study aims at examining and quantifying two major characteristics of dividends in Vietnam using the Partial Adjustment model.
Second, the hypothesis that whether the absence of institutional ownership reduces the dividend is examined. Four models are applied to test this hypothesis. All data are collected from listed firms of the Vietnam stock exchange for the period of 2007- 2013.3 The structure of study There are six chapters in this study. First, the introduction chapter presents the problem statement as well as the research objectives.
The second chapter presents the overall literature relevant to the issues mentioned in the introduction. Chapter 3 demonstrates clearly why four models are employed to test the hypotheses in this study. Measurements of all variables and econometric analyses are proposed in the fourth chapter. Based on the discussion in the previous chapters, Chapter 5 presents the findings drawn from the regression results of the four models.
Finally, conclusions, implications and limitations are presented in Chapter 6. 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter will introduce a concept and common characteristics of dividends. Then, views on the dividend policies can be classified into two distinct theories: (i) dividend irrelevance theory and (ii) dividend relevance theory. Afterwards, the definition of institutional ownership as well as its effects on dividend policies is examined.
This relationship will be clarified through: taxation, agency theory and signaling. At the end, overall impacts of institutional ownership on dividends will be summarized to provide final conclusions.1 Dividend and characteristics According to Frankfurter et al.