Relationship between Earnings Quality and Dividend Payment of the Listed Companies in Property and Construction Industry Group in the Stock Exchange of Thailand
Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to study earnings quality, dividend payment, and the
relationship between earnings quality and dividend payment of the Listed Companies in the
Property and Construction Industry Group in the Stock Exchange of Thailand. The proxy used as
the representative for earnings quality was the levels of discretionary accruals, which was based on
the Modified Jones Model (1995).
The sample of this study was comprised of 94 companies listed in the Property and
Construction Industry Group in the Stock Exchange of Thailand from 2010 to 2015. The secondary
data were collected from each companys financial statement report on the database of the Stock
Exchange of Thailand. Descriptive statistics including mean, maximum, minimum, and standard
deviation were used to analyze the data, and inferential statistics including Logistic Regression
Analysis, Pearsons Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, and Multiple Linear Regression
Analysis were also used to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance.
The results showed that the discretionary accruals of the companies in the Property and
Construction Industry Group had an average 0.1684 times of the total assets of the previous year,
while the mean for dividend payout ratio was at 27.52 percent. The findings also revealed that the
earnings quality of the construction services sector was lower than that of the property development
sector and the construction materials sector at the 0.05 level of significance. Moreover, The
discretionary accruals had a negative relationship with the dividend payout ratio at the 0.05 level of
significance, which was implied that high earnings quality companies with a lower level of
discretionary accruals could have a higher level of dividend payout.