RELEVANCE OR IRRELEVANCE OF DIVIDENDS: AN ANALYSIS WITH ICON COMPANIES

The dividend represents the distribution of an organization's results, a portion of its profit, which is the main objective of a company. There are two opposing theoretical currents on the subject: that of the Relevance of Dividends, also called Theory of the Bird in the Hand, by Gordon and Lintner, and that of the irrelevance of dividends, which attributes the gain to market value, by Modigliani and Miller. This article sought to verify the existence of a relationship between the distribution of dividends and the market value of companies belonging to the ICON index, which aims to represent the average performance of the most representative companies in the cyclical, non-cyclical and health consumption sector. The research comprises data for quarterly periods between 2013 and 2018. The regression model was used with data in a fixed effects panel. The theoretical model applied by Zanon, Araujo and Nunes (2017) has the Market to Book variable as a dependent, and as an explanatory variable of interest, the Payout (ratio between the dividends paid and the profits for the period of each company) in different applications. The results present the discussion about the limitation of the statistical assumptions of the regression, as well as the non-significance of Payout in the behavior of the relation between the market value and the carrying amount. The control by variables allowed to confirm the relationship of the Market to Book with the size of the company and the level of Leverage, but contrary to expectations, it did not show a relationship with Earnings per Share or Profitability. The discussion of these results can empirically contribute to the decision-making process between the distribution of profits or capital financing, as well as theoretically corroborating the theory of the irrelevance of dividends.