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I think industry thinks of dividends like prehistoric times.
The way I see sentiment of management is that once they can get away with dumping a dividend they won’t go back.
Probably not for utilities etc.
Pure speculation here but I’d guess they’d reserve cash for acquisitions to bump stock prices. That’s pretty much what GE did. Fell in love with acquisitions that would bump their earnings they could extrapolate their (better) earnings multiple to and bump their stock price. Then when the acquisitions didn’t yield corresponding earnings multiples they had to pay the piper. Cut the dividend and divested. And Emmelt ate shit and his successor lasted 9 months.
Pure speculation but history rhyming and all.
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