Dividend Policy Determinants in New Zealand-listed Companies: Financial Performance, Board Gender Diversity, and Firm Operational Scope
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Adhikari, Rajesh
Alam, Shafiq
Dai, Bing
Sun, Jishuo Jimmy
Badshah, Ihsan
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MDPI AG
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Among developed-market stock exchanges, the NZX is distinctive. Its imputation credit system and capital-gains-tax exemption create financial incentives for firms to distribute earnings that have no close parallel elsewhere, yet what actually drives payout decisions at the firm level has never been tested in a multivariate panel framework. We analyzed 116 NZX-listed companies from 2017 to 2023. The results show that revenue and net profit prove to be the dominant positive predictors of dividend payout; cash flow and shareholders’ equity are negatively associated with the payout, suggesting that the firms prioritize capital retention in a manner consistent with the pecking order theory. Market capitalization adds nothing once earnings quality is accounted for in the model. Firms in which women occupied more than half of board seats paid, on average, seventeen times more in dividends than those with minimal female representation, a gap sustained without exception across all seven years. Domestic firms outpaid multinational firms throughout and, by 2023, had exceeded their own pre-period baseline, while multinationals had not. Our findings have implications for income-focused investors, for boards weighing payout strategies, and for policymakers assessing the case for diversity requirements.
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3801 Applied Economics, 35 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, 3501 Accounting, Auditing and Accountability, 3502 Banking, Finance and Investment, 38 Economics, 3507 Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour, Women's Health, dividend policy, board gender diversity, domestic vs. multinational firms, New Zealand Stock Exchange, Panel Regression, Corporate Governance
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Journal of Risk and Financial Management, ISSN: 1911-8066 (Print); 1911-8074 (Online), MDPI AG, 19(8), 635-635. doi: 10.3390/jrfm19080635
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© 2026 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0