Payout Strategy

In the supplemental readings you saw some examples of firms that have announced dividends, stock splits, and reverse stock splits. The assigned research paper reading looked at firm’s decisions and what factors appear to affect payout decisions. For this activity you will write a short one page to one and a half page paper on a firm of your choosing meeting the following criteria:

Publicly traded
You can provide a link to the firm’s profile and financial summary (similar to what can be found in Yahoo finance (Links to an external site.) http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MSFT&ql=1 ).Note: this can be other websites and non U.S. stocks can be used as well
An announcement that a firm has split, repurchased, dividend, or other payout discussed in the module’s readings in the past 3 months. The announcement could include the announcement of a firm cancelling their dividend payments as well as the various payouts.

For the selected firm provide a brief profile of the firm including the primary businesses/industry of the firm. Provide an overview of the industry. Address issues such as whether the firm is considered being in a growth industry, mature industry and the role/impact your firm has on the industry.

Discuss the payout strategy selected by your firm. What did the firm announce? Why did the firm make the announcement? Based on your study of dividends and other payouts does the strategy make sense? What signals is management sending with the announcement? Do you agree with the decision? As a shareholder would you be pleased with the announcement? Why or why not?