Characteristics identifying the companies conducting different dividend policy: evidence from Poland

Research background: Dividend policy has been a subject of many scientific studies. Although most of them focus on its determinants, there is still a research gap concerning the lack of comprehensive research on the differences between companies implementing different types of dividend policy. Furthermore, no at-tempt has been made to indicate which of them could be considered as more attractive for stock market investor that invests in dividend stocks. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis of companies with different dividend policy from the point of view of their investment attractiveness. Methods: The empirical research is conducted among the regular dividend payers listed on the main market of the Warsaw Stock Exchange in years 2001–2017. The data for analysis is collected from Notoria Service and Stock Market Yearbooks. The main calculations are carried out using the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), descriptive statistics and one-way analysis of variance ANOVA with Fisher’s LSD test. Findings & Value added: The value added of this paper is a holistic approach to comparison of companies conducting different dividend policy. The most significant differences are observed in case of extreme and residual dividend policy. The first policy should be of particular interest to investors investing for dividends, while the second one should be attractive to investors that invest for capital growth. The research is valuable due to the lack of academic studies concerning different dividend policy in the context of attractiveness of investing in dividend shares.