Dividend Policy of 3 Hk Equity

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Dividend payout policy is always one of the most contested issues in finance. In this essay, dividend payout policy of three Hong Kong-listed companies with a listing history of at least fifteen consecutive years will be investigated. They are CLP Holdings, Hang Seng Bank and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. By comparing the trends of Earnings Per Share (EPS) and Dividends per share of all companies, one could see similar result in all firms. If EPS increases, Dividend per Share will increase; however if EPS decreases, Dividend per Share will not change a lot or remain stable. For CLP Holdings, it shows a trend of stable increases; for Hang Seng Bank, even though there were some fluctuation in the first few years, it remains stable afterwards till last year; and for Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, it shows the most stable trend in comparing the other two firms. These trends may reflect that even these firms are of different industry, they tend to remain a less variable dividend payment. Fig 1. CLP Holdings EPS Vs Dividend Per Share (1991 -2012) Fig 1. CLP Holdings EPS Vs Dividend Per Share (1991 -2012) Fig 2. Hang Seng Bank EPS Vs Dividend Per Share (1996-2012) Fig 2. Hang Seng Bank EPS Vs Dividend Per Share (1996-2012) Fig 3. Hutchison Whampoa Ltd EPS Vs Dividend Per Share (1991-2012) Fig 3. Hutchison Whampoa Ltd EPS Vs Dividend Per Share (1991-2012) In order to further analysis the dividend policy of these three companies, Lintner’s Dividend Smoothing model is adopted. The model is as follow: D1-D0 = s(tEPS1 – D0) D1 – D0 : Actual Dividend Change s : Speed of adjustment of actual to target divided t : Target Payout ratio Assuming s = 0.1, t be the average of all years’ actual payout ratio, one could find that the trend of the results from this model (Fig 4 to 6) are very similar to the above graph (Fig 1-3). They all follow close the changes in EPS.

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