Are Dividends Informative About Future Earnings?

Download or read book Are Dividends Informative About Future Earnings? written by Michelle Hanlon and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper investigates whether dividends are informative about a firm's future earnings. We examine this issue by investigating the association between current year stock returns and current and future earnings for firms that pay dividends in the current year as compared to firms that do not pay dividends. The data reveal that relative to non-dividend paying firms, dividend paying firms have current returns that are more associated with future earnings. In addition, we report results consistent with the market having a better understanding of a firm's future earnings after a dividend initiation relative to before. Overall, our results are consistent with dividends providing relevant information about future earnings to the market that is not in current earnings and that this information is incorporated into stock price.