A dividend lets the investors choose if they want to buy more shares (from the same sellers who would sell in a buyback) or mix their current shares with the cash.
Investors buying more shares with dividends doesn't decrease the number of shares outstanding. If you increase the share price without decreasing the share count, you have created value out of thin air and are saying the company was more valuable without the cash than it was with it.
The key is the asymmetry of information. The market price should reflect all public information. However the company has non-public information, which puts them in the best position to judge if money is best invested inside the company or out. Share buybacks are a legal form of insider-trading.
Number of shares doesn't matter, enterprise value does and it doesn't change. Your implying that there would be a further equity issuance which doesn't routinely happen on buybacks.
Reducing shares increases the price (while keeping market cap the same). Share splits increases the shares outstanding and decreases the price. So... yes, shares outstanding does matter.
Whether the company destroys the shares or retains them as treasury stock is irrelevant. Investors don't care if their share price went up by 10%, or if they effectively have 1.10 shares.
> Investors buying more shares with dividends doesn't decrease the number of shares outstanding. If you increase the share price without decreasing the share count, you have created value out of thin air and are saying the company was more valuable without the cash than it was with it.
You're wrong. When the company issues the dividend, the share price falls for precisely the amount issued. So if everybody used that money to buy the shares again, the share price should return (roughly) to the value before the dividend was paid. The number of shares outstanding wouldn't change.
You're wrong. The market cap already had the cash priced into it, regardless of how it was used (as a dividend or re-invested). By your logic, a company whose profits remained flat and issued a dividend would become less valuable every year until it was worthless.
There is a value in a future dividend. On the ex-dividend date, the share becomes less valuable because the new holder will not receive a dividend in X days. This X is usually very small, so a share that goes from paying you $5 in two weeks to not paying you has clearly lost value close to $5.
The market cap already reflects the value of all future earnings discounted to the present. The timing of dividend payments is irrelevant.
If your argument was true, that a stock's price predictably fell the day after the dividend, investors could simply short the stock and get a guaranteed profit, which is not possible in an efficient market.
False. If I receive cash today I can reinvest it and start earning a return. If I receive cash in a month I have forgone one months reinvestment return.
> investors could simply short the stock and get a guaranteed profit, which is not possible in an efficient market.
False. Well if you are short a stock over ex dividend date then you need to pay the owner of the stock (whomever you borrowed from) 1) the dividend which he has forgone 2) a financing spread equal to a benchmark (e.g. FED Funds + 300 bp's) for the duration you are short.
No offense but you really haven't thought this through very hard.
Also markets are not efficient despite what you read in academia.
Say you own 1 share. It's trading for $20. Tomorrow the company pays $2 dividend. Then your share is worth $18 and you have $2 cash as well.
Alternatively, if you're buying the share, you're willing to pay $20 for it today but only $18 tomorrow, because you know that you won't be getting a $2 dividend if you buy it.
If you take future dividend payments into account, you also need to discount them. If you think that (discounted future dividends) > (stock price), that's a signal for you to buy. If enough investors reason this way, the price will rise until (discounted future dividends) ~~ (stock price).
The future earnings have huge uncertainty to them. A company with a $50 stock price might have $5 per share worth of cash in the bank, (which is something you can actually observe.) The other $45 represents expected future earnings. If the stock pays out a 50c dividend, the stock now has $4.50 per share in the bank and the $45 expected future value is unchanged.
Either you're stupid, or there's a misunderstanding. Probably the latter. Let me try again. Assume that δ is the discount factor (δ = 1 / (1 + r)), P is price, and D_i is the dividend in year i.
That's not the argument I'm making. I'm not disagreeing with you.
The point I'm making, which I admit is an obvious one, is that without profits a dividend will erode a company's value. Simple flow of money. Unless there's a surplus flow of money in, you can't have an outward flow. Therefore, the effect of a dividend on a company's market cap depends on how much profit they have in comparison.
The key is the asymmetry of information. The market price should reflect all public information. However the company has non-public information, which puts them in the best position to judge if money is best invested inside the company or out. Share buybacks are a legal form of insider-trading.