The Investigation of The Determinants of Dividend Payout in Malaysia: Impact of Covid-19 Pandemics

• Main Author: Mohamad Haikal, Abd Rahim
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: HG Finance
• Online Access: https://etd.uum.edu.my/11126/1/depositpermission-824424.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/11126/2/s824424_01.pdf; https://etd.uum.edu.my/11126/

This study investigates the impact of profitability, debt, firm size and impact of different type of substantial shareholder (government and foreign) to the dividend payout by 365 dividend initiator from 813 firms of public listed company excluding banking sector in Malaysia during pandemic Covid-19. The result revealed the determinants had slightly difference before and during the pandemic period. Before pandemic period in 2019, the firms size and concentration foreign shareholding are positive significant while leverage is negative significant. However, during pandemic period in 2020, profitability had added with a group of firms size and concentration foreign shareholding to be positively significant and leverage maintain to be negative significant. The changes are driven by healthiest of cash flows of the firms. That because during pandemic all business operation were disrupted and causing some business sectors unable to be operate due to proactive action taken by government in order to outbreaks of Covid-19 transmission. The findings from this research are important to investors to select the firms that has stable dividend payout during crisis period based on determinants that was obtained during different period of time. The data is acquired through Thomson Reuters DataStream from year 2019 to 2020. Descriptive statistics are used to compile a data package that reflects a population or a sample by understanding the short descriptive coefficients. The correlation analysis is conducted to identify the strength and direction of the linear connection of the structure. The study does multiple regression analysis and a specification of a fixed effect. In this study, the Vector Inflation Factors(VIF) addressed the multicollinearity issues between independent variables.