Determinants of the Dividend Policy of International Energy Companies

Dividend policy is an important component of the company's financial strategy, as it affects the amount of reinvested funds and external financing, and therefore it has been the focus of many scholars for more than a century. However, under globalization, technological progress and emerging environmental problems, the issue of searching for the determinants of dividend policy again becomes topical. New financial and non-financial indicators of companies become important in the process of making decisions on the amount of dividend payments to shareholders, while others no longer play a primary role in determining the amount of dividend or affect only the dividends paid by certain groups of firms, for example, companies that belong only to one or several industries. So, the purpose of this work is to find the factors that influence the dividend policy of international energy companies. The peculiarity of the study is that the work analyzes the influence of three previously unexplored factors: R&D expense, environment expense and the availability of corporate institutions. The main methods used in the work are the analysis of the sites of international energy companies, their annual reports and reports on sustainable development, the collection of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of international energy companies and the construction of three econometric models. Based on the regression analysis results, it becomes obvious that the dividends to shareholders of energy companies are affected by traditional factors, such as profitability, liquidity and the level of debt burden, and non-classical indicators that include the characteristics of the Board of Directors and CEO. With regard to poorly explored indicators, only corporate institutions and environment expense have a significant impact on the level of dividend payments. Nevertheless, this study examines the impact of only 17 indicators on the eleven-year period, which leaves room for further research.