Institutional ownership and firm value of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria: the moderating role of dividend payout

This study examined the effect of institutional ownership on firm value of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria with dividend payout as a moderating variable. This study employed a sample of selected thirty-five (35) manufacturing companies listed on the Nigeria Exchange Group over a period of 12 years from 2010 – 2021. This study employs secondary data which were sourced from the annual financial reports of the selected companies. Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis. The result of the study shows that institutional ownership exhibited a positive relationship on firm value but not significant at 5% level. This implies that institutional ownership had insignificant effect on firms’ value. On the moderating effect, it was confirmed that both dividend payout and institutional ownership jointly influenced firms’ value. This implies that a non-regular payment of dividend to existing shareholders will affect the contribution of institutional shareholders to the totality of firms’ value from institution ownership by 31.2%. This study concludes that the degree of institutional ownership involvement in listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria depends on the level of dividend payout to shareholders. Therefore, this study recommends that management of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria should ensure payment of dividend to the shareholders of their companies from the company’s annual net income in other to attract institutional shareholders and other potential investors.