Tunneling effect and dividend policy of listed companies on vietnamese securities market

中 原 大 學 國 際 商 學 碩 士 學 位 學 程 碩 士 學 位 論 文 股 利 政 策 之 利 益 輸 送 效 果 中原大學 國際商學碩士學位學程 碩士學位論文 股利政策之利益輸送效果—以越南股票市 場為例 Tunneling Effect and Dividend policy of listed companies on Vietnamese securities market — 以 越 南 股 票 市 場 為 例 鄧 中 堅 中 華 民 國 105 年 月 指導教授：陳怡珮 研究生：鄧中堅(Dang Trung Kien) 中華民國 105 年 月 摘要 本研究中，利益輸送效果(Tunneling effect)被認為是一種控股股東可以藉由高股利 政策將公司資本轉為私有利益的現象，這種現象可能會為公司的未來發展和少數股東之利 益帶來風險。 利益輸送(Tunneling) 在新興市場中頗為普遍，尤其是政府常扮演著控制股東的重要 角色。越南的股票市場發展至今二十餘年，已成為新興市場代表之一。股票市場已經成為 顯著的資本籌資渠道，有助於推動國民經濟和發展。 本研究的主要目的是要探討在越南上市公司股利政策的利益輸送效果。實證研究結 果證明，政府控制的公司、所有權集中較高的公司、近期進行新股發行或認購權發行的公 司，皆會有較高的股息收益率。這些結果表明，控制股東可以使用股利來達到利益輸送效 果。 此外，國有企業往往喜歡在越南市場投資，因為這對經濟增長有好處。這項本研究 也試圖檢測政府控制公司是否會犧牲投資機會，並藉由高股利政策來達到賺取私有利益的 目的。研究結果顯示政府似乎想要控制利益輸送效果在一定水準，亦即在不影響公司成長 性及企業長期利益之下，控制股東可藉由高股利政策來達到賺取私有利益。 關鍵字：利益輸送效果、股利政策、越南股票市場 i ABSTRACT In this research, tunneling effect is identified as a phenomenon that the controlling shareholders may extract the firm’s capital into their own pocket through high dividend payout policy, which may risk the company future growth as well as the benefit of minority shareholders Tunneling has been revealed as a common practice in those Emerging markets where the government plays an important role on controlling the business Today, Vietnam is the emerging market, with the securities market has been introduced to public for almost two decades As expectation, securities market has become remarkable capital mobilization channel to push up their national economic and maintain a high development speed This research aims to investigate the existence of tunneling practice on the dividend payout policy of Vietnamese listed companies The empirical findings show that the governmentcontrolled companies, the companies with high concentrated ownership or with recent IPO or right issues activity will have higher dividend yield These findings indicate that the dividends may be used by controlling shareholders as a means of tunneling In addition, as recognition the advantage on investment and growth which state-owned organizations often enjoy in Vietnam market, this study also tries to find out if the governmentcontrolled companies may sacrifice their investment opportunities by using the high-dividend policy to earn cash which then serves for other purposes The outcome documents that the government seems to keep their tunneling practice under the control, in order to avoid the harmful effect on company’s growth as well as their long-term benefits from the business Keywords: Tunneling effect, dividend policy, Vietnamese securities market, governmentcontrolled ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT This study would not have been possible without the generosity; patience and guidance extended by these research oriented individuals who derive great satisfaction in helping others attain success: My advisor, Dr Yi-Pei Chen, the researchers’ adviser, shares her knowledge, shows a greatly concern and support to the researcher; Dr Han-Ching Huang, Chairman of the panel, for all the help, support and assistance; Dr Tsui-Jung Lin, committee member, for giving valuable suggestions to further prove the research study; Dr Li-Mei Lin, English editing, for her kindly help to improve the academic language quality; The Vietstock Company, provides the research data bank to accomplish the study; The researchers’ family for their undying support, emotionally, spiritually and financially; The researcher’ friends and classmates who have provided warm-hearted support along the way The Researcher iii TABLE OF CONTENT 摘 要 i ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT iii TABLE OF CONTENT iv TABLE LIST vi FIGURE LIST vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Financial Development in Vietnam 2.2 School of thought 10 2.3 Dividend policy comparison between the Developed and the Emerging market, from the view of the US and China market 11 2.4 Hypotheses Development 14 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND DATA 19 3.1 Methodology 19 3.1.1 Determinants of dividend payout 19 3.1.2 Empirical proxies for Investment Opportunity Set (IOS) 19 3.1.3 Definition of variables 20 3.2 Data Collection 21 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND ANALYSES 24 4.1 General Statistic 24 iv 4.2 Empirical Results 30 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 38 REFERENCES 40 v TABLE LIST Table 2–1: Overview of Vietnamese market Table 3–1 Definitions of Variables 21 Table 4–1: Descriptive Statistic - HANOI STOCK EXCHANCE (HNX) 24 Table 4–2: Descriptive Statistic - HO CHI MINH STOCK EXCHANCE (HOSE) 26 Table 4–3: Correlation analysis - HA NOI STOCK EXCHANCE (HNX) 28 Table 4–4: Correlation analysis - HO CHI MINH STOCK EXCHANCE (HOSE) 29 Table 4–5 Determinants of Dividend payout policy _ HA NOI STOCK EXCHANCE (HNX) 31 Table 4–6 Determinants of Dividend payout policy _ HO CHI MINH STOCK EXCHANCE (HOSE) 32 Table 4–7 Determinants of Dividend payout policy _ HA NOI STOCK EXCHANCE (HNX) 34 Table 4–8 Determinants of Dividend payout policy _ HO CHI MINH STOCK EXCHANCE (HOSE) 36 FIGURE LIST Figure 1: Number of Vietnamese Listed Companies from 2000 - 2014 22 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Dividend-payout policy is always considered as one of the most important decisions in financial management of company The dividend payment may affect directly the interests of shareholders and the future development of a Joint-stock company As the profit after tax will be divided into two parts: The earmarked profit using to pay for dividends to shareholders and the retained earnings for reinvestment Especially, in a new security market as Vietnam, due to the information asymmetry, investors often rely on the dividend payment as a viewpoint to predict the company’s future prospects Therefore, understanding how the function of dividend-payout policy is, its impact and reflection to the economic is absolutely necessary for governance, market controller, firm manager, as well as any investors and stock traders in the market Vietnamese security market is a very new market, with only near decades of founding It started with the establishment of the State Securities Commission - the regulator over the securities market in 1997 It became an indispensable premise to bring securities market to Vietnam, with the opening of the two currently national stock exchanges, Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange in July 2000 - a trading platform for relatively large corporations' stock, and Hanoi Stock Exchange in March 2005 for relatively SMEs’ stocks The Vietnamese security market, as the founders’ expectation, has worked well to push up their national economic and maintain a high development speed The establishment of market, at the same time, is a necessary requirement for making a reasonable and stable ―equitization1‖ process, the transformation of all State-owned enterprise (the key role of the Vietnamese economic sectors) to be joint-stock companies, in order to create an opening and flexible market For the fulfillment of Vietnam’s accession to WTO on July 11th, 2006, the official remark that the country entered the process of regional and international economic integration The stock market has grown significantly — only two stocks were traded in the beginning, compared with 657 today on both the Ho Chi Minh Exchange and the Hanoi Exchange — and is attracting a growing number of domestic investors Securities market is now Equitization is a Vietnamese English term that denotes the conversion of a state-owned enterprise in Vietnam into a public limited company or a corporation becoming the important capital mobilization channel for Vietnam economy According to a report of British Reuters, the Vietnamese stock market today is the most attractive market in South East Asia with the VN Index growth rate at 13.4 percent, the sharpest in the region With the government target is making Vietnam become the new world’s factory with the presence of giant technology groups such as Samsung, Microsoft, etc At the same time, the new policy of lifted the foreign ownership ratio ceiling in unconditional business fields cause a breakthrough in market It brings the prediction of a brilliant economic growth in the time not so far, a good sign for any investors In addition, the Vietnamese stock market also attract foreign investors are believed to be the second cheapest in South East Asia, just after Singapore3 Foreigners now want to learn more about this new emerging security market to secure and maximize the benefit of their investment It may be the chance and also the challenge for domestic business Through the development process, there is period, stock market was a very attractive investment channel for stockholders in Vietnam due to the guarantee of stable capital gain and high dividend-payout from listed companies However, the trend changed Recently, enterprises in general, particularly the listed companies, are going through a difficult period, due to the suffering from negative impact of both international and domestic economy fluctuations It makes dividend payments problem becomes more thorny for every single company In the previous stage with rapid growth and optimistic investors, the majority of the listed companies, with satisfactory results business, were easily selecting to make high payout policy However, from 2009 to present, when production and business activity slumped, the access to external funds is limited by the high cost of capital, the selection has been re-considered Nowadays, taking advantage of internal capital is the top priority of most listed companies It also means the listed companies may choose to cut the cash dividend payments, even to no dividend payment This decision certainly has caused negative effects to the investors’ psychology, whom already quite pessimistic because of the downturn of the entire securities market, thereby affecting the stock price and the value of company Mobilized VND 1,000,000 trillion (≈USD 47.6 billion) for the Government; mobilized VND 700 trillion (≈USD 33.3 billion) for the enterprises via auctions for equitization and issuing shares, fund units, make the securities market capitalization reach nearly 40% GDP (as of July 2014) http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/business/137081/vietnamese-stock-market-now-attractive-to-foreigninvestors.html In general, most of ratio in HOSE is quite identical to HNX, instead of some small difference in the ownership and dividend payout method In Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, government and highconcentrated shareholders share smaller proportion, at 44.9% (453/1008) and 45.3% (455/1008) respectively HOSE’s listed companies also more enjoy the stock dividend issue at 16.3%, double than that of in HNX In addition, ―Industrial‖ and ―Consumer goods‖ are sharing the highest number of firms in Industry sector 27 Table 4–3: Correlation analysis - HA NOI STOCK EXCHANCE (HNX) Probability DIV_YIELD LARGEST GOV 1.000 0.057 1.000 LARGEST (0.039) 0.068 0.635 1.000 GOV (0.014) (0.000) 0.052 -0.079 -0.105 IPO_RI (0.060) (0.004) (0.000) -0.070 -0.071 -0.054 MKTBKAS (0.011) (0.010) (0.052) -0.084 -0.104 -0.066 MKTBKEQ (0.002) (0.000) (0.017) 0.473 0.055 0.035 EP (0.000) (0.046) (0.207) -0.033 0.006 0.120 SIZE (0.235) (0.832) (0.000) 0.055 0.128 0.110 LEV (0.050) (0.000) (0.000) -0.006 -0.010 STD_EARNing 0.170 (0.000) (0.830) (0.718) 0.000 -0.016 -0.025 DIV_ STOCK (0.989) (0.571) (0.360) 0.345 0.037 0.007 ROE_ (0.000) (0.186) (0.798) Note: The p-value are reported in parentheses IPO_RI MKTBKAS MKTBKEQ EP SIZE LEV STD_EARNING DIV_STOCK ROE 1.000 0.082 (0.003) 0.105 (0.000) 0.086 (0.002) 0.106 (0.000) 0.015 (0.582) 0.128 (0.000) 0.288 (0.000) 0.114 (0.000) 1.000 0.921 (0.000) 0.000 (0.995) 0.105 (0.000) -0.086 (0.002) 0.093 (0.001) 0.057 (0.041) 0.119 (0.000) 1.000 -0.023 (0.411) 0.025 (0.366) -0.195 (0.000) 0.092 (0.001) 0.095 (0.001) 0.041 (0.142) 1.000 0.088 (0.002) 0.048 (0.086) 0.568 (0.000) 0.071 (0.011) 0.736 (0.000) 1.000 0.576 (0.000) 0.034 (0.216) 0.035 (0.212) 0.039 (0.161) 1.000 -0.054 (0.052) 0.001 (0.970) -0.066 (0.018) 1.000 0.069 (0.013) 0.569 (0.000) 1.000 0.097 (0.001) 1.000 - DIV_YIELD - The dependent variable Div_Yield denotes Dividend Yield - The key testing variable IPO_RI denotes recent IPO or right issues activity; Largest denotes company with high-concentrated ownership; Gov denotes government-controlled company; MKTBKAS denotes the market-to-book ratio of assets; MKTBKEQ denotes the market-to-book ratio of equity; EP denotes the earnings/price ratio - The controlling variable Size denotes firm size (natural log of total assets); Leverage: total liabilities/total assets; Std Earning: mean absolute deviation from the mean of net income/mean of total assets over the period; Div_Stock denotes Stock dividend; ROE denotes net return on equity in the year 28 Table 4–4: Correlation analysis - HO CHI MINH STOCK EXCHANCE (HOSE) Probability DIV_YIELD LARGEST GOV 1.000 0.147 1.000 LARGEST (0.000) 0.184 0.545 1.000 GOV (0.000) (0.000) 0.049 -0.118 -0.130 IPO_RI (0.117) (0.000) (0.000) -0.041 0.083 0.083 MKTBKAS (0.198) (0.009) (0.008) -0.052 0.068 0.060 MKTBKEQ (0.098) (0.031) (0.056) 0.437 0.106 0.084 EP (0.000) (0.001) (0.007) -0.114 0.012 0.009 SIZE (0.000) (0.708) (0.765) -0.089 -0.037 0.001 LEV (0.005) (0.241) (0.976) 0.025 0.011 STD_EARNing 0.184 (0.000) (0.421) (0.721) -0.068 -0.088 -0.106 DIV_ STOCK (0.032) (0.005) (0.001) 0.224 0.052 0.047 ROE_ (0.000) (0.097) (0.135) Note: The p-value are reported in parentheses IPO_RI MKTBKAS MKTBKEQ EP SIZE LEV STD_EARNING DIV_STOCK ROE 1.000 0.147 (0.000) 0.161 (0.000) 0.099 (0.002) 0.134 (0.000) -0.027 (0.385) 0.105 (0.001) 0.345 (0.000) 0.107 (0.001) 1.000 0.934 (0.000) 0.017 (0.579) 0.209 (0.000) -0.198 (0.000) 0.160 (0.000) 0.083 (0.009) 0.194 (0.000) 1.000 -0.011 (0.724) 0.226 (0.000) -0.229 (0.000) 0.127 (0.000) 0.112 (0.000) 0.095 (0.002) 1.000 0.032 (0.309) -0.151 (0.000) 0.667 (0.000) 0.021 (0.510) 0.708 (0.000) 1.000 0.326 (0.000) 0.020 (0.520) 0.145 (0.000) 0.063 (0.044) 1.000 -0.146 (0.000) -0.034 (0.283) -0.196 (0.000) 1.000 0.049 (0.119) 0.594 (0.000) 1.000 0.052 (0.098) 1.000 - DIV_YIELD - The dependent variable Div_Yield denotes Dividend Yield - The key testing variable IPO_RI denotes recent IPO or right issues activity; Largest denotes company with high-concentrated ownership; Gov denotes government-controlled company; MKTBKAS denotes the market-to-book ratio of assets; MKTBKEQ denotes the market-to-book ratio of equity; EP denotes the earnings/price ratio - The controlling variable Size denotes firm size (natural log of total assets); Leverage: total liabilities/total assets; Std Earning: mean absolute deviation from the mean of net income/mean of total assets over the period; Div_Stock denotes Stock dividend; ROE denotes net return on equity in the year 29 Table 4-3 and 4-4 present the correlation coefficients of the dependent variables and key testing variable, separated by the sample in Ha Noi (HNX) and Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) From Table 4-3, for the HNX sample, the largest value correlation of key testing variables occurs between GOV and Largest at 0.635, it presents a strong relationship between the government variable with the majority shareholders in listed companies An interesting emphasize has been revealed, all of the key explaining for the hypothesis developments (Largest, Gov, IPO_RI, MKTBKAS, MKTBEQ, EP) are significant at 10% level and most of them positively related to the dividend yield This may be considered as initial evidence to investigate the connection between dividend policy and the tunneling effect of those listed companies in Ha Noi Securities market Identically, Table 4-4 indicates the correlation between testing variable using HOSE observation Basically, it presents similar trend with HNX in the correlation between those key testing variable and the dependent variable (Dividend Yield), except for IPO_RI From both HNX and HOSE’s key testing variable correlation, I recognize the negative significances between out of proxy variable (MKTBKAS & MKTBEQ) for Investment Opportunities with the dividend yield This output is against the Hypothesis which respects to have positive relationship This issue brings an interesting finding which will be presented later on 4.2 Empirical Results According to Arellano (1987), for the terms of fixed T and large N or T