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The policy of paying company’s dividends has aroused a lot of controversies among financial scholars. Being as such, this article attempts to experiment a “model of dividend policy” concerning the active companies in Tehran Stock Exchange during 1994 — 2002.
The outcomes prove that Iranian companies divide on average 68 percent of their earnings, and by contrast, radio and television broadcasting industry divides a higher proportion of its profits in the long run.
The simple Lintner model applies to 165 companies out of a set of 212 firms in question and can serve as a good basis to predict distribution of dividends in Iran. An investigation of “dividend adjustment speed” at these companies does not reflect a meaning difference. A higher ratio at Tehran Stock Exchange indicates that directors change the amounts of dividend per share (DPS) at a rate further than the ordinary changes of each share. Moreover, no meaningful relationship exists between the growth rate of companies’ return and the speed of dividend adjustment. The outcome proves that the change in DPS in the three past years has affected DPS changes in the current year. Such effect is far greater in an increasing situation. A study of such ratios implies that when the Profits rise, the cohesion of DPS is less in the long run and this corresponds with theory. When the profits decrease, this theory does not apply. A conclusion can be drawn that directors do not show any tendencies to decrease DPS in contradistinction to their interest in increasing it.