Ex-dividend date is an important one if you want to be eligible for a dividend payment — as long as you hold the shares up to and including that day, you’ll get your money. Alternatively, sometimes share prices fall further than expected when the day comes around, and if you’re careful you might be able to pick up a timely bargain.
Here are three FTSE companies reaching that key date next Wednesday, 11 September:
Standard Life
Record inflows of client funds helped push first-half fee-based income up 14% at Standard Life (LSE: SL), with operating profit up 6% to £304m. Chief executive David Nish waxed “Standard Life has made really good progress in the first half of the year, delivering substantial growth in sales, flows and assets, all driving higher revenues and operating profits“.
The firm put its money where its mouth is, bumping its interim dividend by 6.5% to 5.22p per share, and the ex-dividend date for that payment is 11 September. For the full year, a 6.5% rise in the total dividend would provide shareholders with 15.7p per share, representing a yield of 4.7% on the current 333p share price.
Land Securities Group
If you want to invest in the property market, a real-estate investment trust can be a good way to go. Land Securities Group (LSE: LAND) is one that has been providing a dividend yield of between 3 and 4% in recent years, and looks set to repeat that feat this year after having proposed a 7.6p-per-share first-quarter payment.
With the shares currently changing hands at 867p apiece, the same payment repeated for the next three quarters would provide a full-year yield of 3.5%, but as the market appears to be picking up, we could be seeing a little more than that.
G4S
Things are starting to look up for G4S (LSE: GFS) shareholders, who are on for a first-half dividend payment of 3.42p per share. That’s unchanged from the same period a year previously and there’s no rise currently forecast for the full year, but we’re still expecting a reasonable yield of around 3.4% based on the current 256p share price.
And with a new chief executive in the shape of Ashley Almanza in place, and a share placement planned for reducing the security firm’s debt mountain, things, surely, can only go the way the song says.
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> Alan does not own any shares mentioned in this article.
