Ключові чинники дивідендної політики публічних компаній ІТ-сектору США

The purpose of this study is to explain why U.S. publicly listed information-technology firms – once reluctant to share cash – now pay dividends by testing how profitability, liquidity, firm age, growth opportunities, capital-expenditure intensity, past payouts, and corporate age jointly shape dividend policy.Regarding methodology, we analyze a balanced panel of 46 technology companies from 2010 to 2024 (690 firm-years) using firm- and year-fixed effects with heteroskedasticity-robust errors. All variables are standardized so that each coefficient reflects a one-standard-deviation change. Diagnostic tests address issues such as multicollinearity, serial correlation, and stationarity.The key findings reveal that dividend behavior in tech deviates from classic free-cash-flow logic: higher profitability reduces payouts (β = –2.23, p < 0.001), whereas greater liquidity increases them (β = 0.20, p = 0.01). Growth opportunities, proxied by price-to-book, dampen dividends (β = –0.39, p = 0.05), while corporate age boosts them (β = 0.14, p = 0.03), supporting life-cycle theory. Dividend smoothing is pronounced, with 57% of the previous year’s payout carried forward (β = 0.57, p < 0.001). Altogether, the model explains 51% of the within-firm variation and 43% of the overall variation, underscoring the relevance of the chosen predictors.The practical implications are twofold: managers should align the payout mode with balance-sheet context – mature platforms holding moderate cash can credibly raise regular dividends, whereas asset-light cloud businesses may favor opportunistic buy-backs – and investors can treat dividend initiation in tech as a quality screen that combines income with superior risk-adjusted returns. Crucially, these insights also help students see how capital-allocation theory translates into real-world payout decisions, making abstract finance concepts tangible in classroom discussion.Finally, the study’s originality and value lie in isolating the combined effects of liquidity, growth, and age within a single sector, thereby reconciling agency, pecking-order, and life-cycle views in an intangibleasset environment. The evidence clarifies why dividends have become a complement, rather than a substitute, for buybacks in Big Tech, providing a framework that can be replicated for cross-sector comparisons.