The Intelligent Investor_ The Definitive Book on Value Investing - Benjamin Graham [198]
A niggardly policy has often been imposed on a company because its financial position is relatively weak, and it has needed all or most of its earnings (plus depreciation charges) to pay debts and bolster its working-capital position. When this is so there is not much the shareholders can say about it—except perhaps to criticize the management for permitting the company to fall into such an unsatisfactory financial position. However, dividends are sometimes held down by relatively unprosperous companies for the declared purpose of expanding the business. We feel that such a policy is illogical on its face, and should require both a complete explanation and a convincing defense before the shareholders should accept it. In terms of the past record there is no reason a priori to believe that the owners will benefit from expansion moves undertaken with their money by a business showing mediocre results and continuing its old management.
Stock Dividends and Stock Splits
It is important that investors understand the essential difference between a stock dividend (properly so-called) and a stock split. The latter represents a restatement of the common-stock structure—in a typical case by issuing two or three shares for one. The new shares are not related to specific earnings reinvested in a specific past period. Its purpose is to establish a lower market price for the single shares, presumably because such lower price range would be more acceptable to old and new shareholders. A stock split may be carried out by what technically may be called a stock dividend, which involves a transfer of sums from earned surplus to capital account; or else by a change in par value, which does not affect the surplus account.*
What we should call a proper stock dividend is one that is paid to shareholders to give them a tangible evidence or representation of specific earnings which have been reinvested in the business for their account over some relatively short period in the recent past—say, not more than the two preceding years. It is now approved practice to value such a stock dividend at the approximate value at the time of declaration, and to transfer an amount equal to such value from earned surplus to capital accounts. Thus the amount of a typical stock dividend is relatively small—in most cases not more than 5%. In essence a stock dividend of this sort has the same overall effect as the payment of an equivalent amount of cash out of earnings when accompanied by the sale of additional shares of like total value to the shareholders. However, a straight stock dividend has an important tax advantage over the otherwise equivalent combination of cash dividends with stock subscription rights, which is the almost standard practice for public-utility companies.
The New York Stock Exchange has set the figure of 25% as a practical dividing line between stock splits and stock dividends. Those of 25% or more need not be accompanied by the transfer of their market value from earned surplus to capital, and so forth.† Some companies, especially banks, still follow the old practice of declaring any kind of stock dividend they please—e.g., one of 10%, not related to recent earnings—and these instances maintain an undesirable confusion in the financial world.
We have long been a strong advocate of a systematic and clearly enunciated policy with respect to the payment of cash and stock dividends. Under such a policy, stock dividends are paid periodically to capitalize all or a stated portion of the earnings reinvested in the business. Such a policy—covering 100% of the reinvested earnings—has been followed by Purex, Government Employees Insurance, and perhaps a few others.*
Stock dividends of