In 1976, American economist Fischer Black wrote a seminal paper entitled The Dividend Puzzle. The core of the paper was that dividends do not matter because the goal of the firm is to maximize the value of the company to its shareholders - i.e., the PV of its CFFA (cash-flow from assets). Therefore, the distribution of those cash-flows is immaterial if the cash-flows are at a maximum. If you were or are an investor, would dividends matter to you