Relevance of dividend policy for food industry corporations in Serbia

Abstract

The subject of this paper is to analyze dividend policy of ten representative companies in the food industry sector. In the conditions of limited and expensive sources of financing, as a significant alternative to borrowing stands the stock market. In business of domestic corporations, however, the issue of new shares represents a rare event. A very important factor for future development of the primary equity market is an increase in volume of trading on the 'asleep' secondary market. Lack of demand and falling trading volume prevents the growth of share prices, and thus the possibility of realizing capital gains from their sale. In such circumstances, the main reason of investment in shares can be dividend yield. The goal of this paper is to analyze the opportunities and to provide guidelines in formulating effective dividend policies in order to attract certain groups of shareholders, among which the most important are institutional investors, which in their portfolios do not usually hold more than a few percent of the shares of individual companies.

Predmet istraživanja u ovom radu je analiza politike dividendi deset reprezentativnih preduzeća prehrambene industrije. U uslovima ograničenih i skupih izvora finansiranja, kao veoma značajna alternativa zaduživanju ističe se primarno tržište akcija. U praksi domaćih korporativnih preduzeća, međutim, emitovanje novih akcija predstavlja retku pojavu. Veoma značajan faktor budućeg razvoja primarnog tržišta akcija predstavlja povećanje obima trgovanja na trenutno uspavanom sekundarnom tržištu. Nedostatak tražnje i pad obima trgovanja onemogućava rast cena akcija, a time i mogućnost ostvarenja kapitalne dobiti od njihove prodaje. U takvim uslovima, osnovni razlog ulaganja u akcije može biti prinos po osnovu dividendi. Cilj ovog rada jeste da analizira mogućnosti i pruži smernice prilikom formulisanja efektivne politike dividendi u funkciji privlačenja određenih grupa akcionara, među kojima se kao najznačajniji mogu izdvojiti institucionalni investitori.