Share Price As Dependent Of Basic EPS Or DPS – A South African Perspective

Abstract

Investors consider both earnings and dividend information when analysing the performance of an entity (Koppeschaar Koppeschaar, Sturdy, Du Toit, Deysel, Rossouw, Van Wyk, Gaie-Booysen, Papageorgiou, Smith & Van der Merwe, 2015). The objective of the study was to determine whether the share price performance of the top 40 JSE listed companies depend more on BEPS or DPS. The study focused on the top 40 JSE listed firms as sample, while data were collected for the period 2012 to 2016. Information was gathered on EPS, DPS and share prices with aid of the INET BFA database. Collected data were analysed through application of SPSS, by measuring Pearson correlation coefficients and performing paired t-tests.

Study limitations included that the sample size was limited to 40 observations, that a limited analytic period was used (2012-2016) and that the study relied on the accuracy of information provided by the INET BFA. Generalisation of research findings is therefore limited. Despite limitations, the study made a worthy contribution by indicating that investors of the top 40 JSE listed firms should rather rely on earnings measures (BEPS) than return measures (DPS) when making investment decisions, because it was statistically proven that BEPS delivers higher Pearson correlation coefficients than DPS when correlations modelling is performed for the selected analytic period.