Corporate earnings, dividend payments, and stock price behavior of manufacturing firms listed in Nigeria

The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of corporate earnings and dividend payments on the stock price behaviour of manufacturing firms in Nigeria between 2013 and 2022. The study adopted an ex-post facto research design, and deployed Generalised Method of Moments (sys-GMM) and Granger causality tests for the data analysis. The two-step system GMM is used to control for omitted variables such as bias, unobserved panel heterogeneity or heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation within panels or groups, endogeneity issues, and measurement errors in the data. Findings show that share price (SP) and its predictors yield valuable insights into the factors influencing stock valuation. Dividend per share (DPS) emerges as a significant positive predictor, suggesting a notable impact on share price. Firm size (FSZ) proves to be a statistically significant predictor, indicating that the size of a firm plays a role in influencing stock prices, with larger firms associated with a decrease in share price. Conversely, Earnings per Share (EPS) and Dividend Yield (DY3) do not exhibit statistical significance, suggesting limited predictive power in the model. By way of conclusion, the study provides an understanding of the factors influencing share price behavior within the Nigerian manufacturing sector and the positive impact of past performance, particularly lagged share prices, confirming the persistence of stock market trends. The practical implications of this study are that it underscores the understanding of financial dynamics in emerging economies, particularly in the context of manufacturing firms in Nigeria.