Investors usually buy shares in dividend-paying companies for the regular dividend payments. A cut or halt in dividend payments affects the cash inflows of these investors. Investors assume that a company is reducing dividends because it is having cash flow problems. This could be the result of deteriorating business conditions, such as declining sales, rising expenses and falling profits. This flag identifies companies where cash dividends (as a fraction of market capitalization) for the most recent fiscal year are significantly lower than the same metric from the prior fiscal year, both in an absolute sense and also relative to the rest of the universe.