Determinants of DPR: evidence of Malaysia’s healthcare sectors / Syafiqah Jalil

Dividend policy is a guideline for a company to configure its dividend payout to existing shareholders. Since the primary objective of a company is shareholders' wealth maximisation. most investors would have an interest in a company that well paid the dividend consistently. Despite a huge volume of research regarding dividend policy using different sample data and sample size, there is still no unison on the determinants of dividend payout ratio. Hence, the purpose of this research is to determine the significant determinants of dividend payout ratio of companies in the Malaysia healthcare sector. The secondary data used in this research was taken from Eikon Data Stream and annual report from seven companies that were included in this study. The dependent variables are current ratio, price to book ratio, return on equity, leverage and natural log of total assets which is the proxy for companies' size. This study found that current ratio (CR), price to Book Ratio (FWB), Return on Equity (ROE) and Size of the company (SIZE) are significant while Leverage (LEV) is insignificant to the Dividend payout Ratio (DPR).