A positive relationship between operating cash flow and cash holdings provides further support for the pecking order theory. These results indicate that profitability does not substitute for cash. In contrast, we cannot detect a significant relationship between the market-to-book ratio and cash holdings. The market-to-book ratio is a proxy for both growth opportunities and/or the importance of adverse selection costs, leading to competing hypotheses in a pecking order framework. On the one hand, firms with high growth opportunities may simply not have sufficient cash that they can accumulate. On the other hand, growth firms face high adverse selection costs when raising external capital, inducing them to hold more cash. Our regression models cannot disentangle the opposing forces. Finally, we document a moderate positive relationship between dividend payments and cash holdings, presumable reflecting firms’ reluctance to cut dividend payments.