Determinantes da estrutura de capital e da distribuição de dividendos das empresas brasileiras: uma análise sob a ótica da flexibilidade financeira

Abstract

Among other important themes, financial flexibility has gained attention from the financial literature. It is discussed that the capacity of the company in appealing promptly to the debt market be the major subsidy to obtain the flexibility, making the company enjoy viable investment opportunities and maximize its value. It should also be pointed out, that few empirical studies have analyzed the influence of flexibility on financial decisions and existing research has shown that financial flexibility plays a significant role in the capital structure and in the distribution of business dividends. Thus, the objective of this research was to analyze the influence on financial flexibility, exercised in the form of debt capacity, in decisions of financing and in the distribution of dividends in the Brazilian companies. Two independent studies were developed, one of them was focused in the capital structure and the other was in the distribution of results. For this purpose, 614 open capital companies were analyzed with data available in Economática in the period between 2011 and 2016. In econometric terms, it was opted for the use of multivariate regression with panel data, being used models with fixed effects and random effects in the first study and regression Tobit and Probit in the second study. The results indicated that the companies reduce the level of indebtedness, as a means of ensuring financial flexibility, as predicted in the literature. In the first study it was also evidenced a positive relation between size and indebtedness and a negative relation between profitability and growth opportunities with the levels of indebtedness, corroborating with the literary predictions. In the second study it was possible to make sure that the companies holding debt capacity distribute a larger volume of dividends, according to the research hypothesis. In an additional way, the results of the second article demonstrated that the major companies, more profitable, more liquid and with greater growth opportunities distribute more dividends, while more indebtedness companies, with greater amount of investment and with more volatile results distribute a smaller portion of their results corroborating with the literature.