4.4 Exploring market timing
The agency- cost –of- debt hypothesis suggests that bondholder may view dividend payouts as a form of wealth transfer to equity holder. This is expected to results in higher cost of debt for higher dividend paying firms. As a result, firms may strategically reduce dividend payouts before issuing bonds in order to reduce the cost of debt financing. To explore this possible strategic timing, we distinguish between firms that lower dividend payouts before issuing bonds and those that do not. We employ the three-year average payout ratio before and after the issuance year to classify our sample firms. The average payout ratio is calculated as cash dividends divided by earnings. Table 5 shows the regression results. Model 1 includes only firms where the average dividend payouts ratio has not the declined before issuing bonds. Model 2, on the contrary, includes those that have decreased the average dividend payouts ratio prior to issuance. The dividend payouts ratio variable exhibits positive and significant coefficients both in Model 1 and Model 2. The similar results in Model 1 and Model 2 suggest that firms do not appear to enrage in any strategic timing of dividend payouts. With respect to the control variables coefficient, the overall results are consistent with the ones reported earlier in the paper. However, some interesting differences across the two sets of frims emerge. First better financial health – measured in terms of Z-score – remains relevant in reducing the cost of debt for the non-decreasing payouts firms only. Favorable affects of financial strength do not materially decrease credit spreads for payouts-decreasing firms. For these firms, declining dividends send a strong enough negative signal about their future prospects to make even their positive financial health irrelevant. Second, higher business risk significantly raises cost of debt for dividend decreasing firms only. That is, for the dividend reducing firms, negative factor – business risk- become materially relevant