Dividend Actions Not as Bad as News Suggests

August 29, 2008

Standard & Poor’s maintains a monthly dividend action report on thousands of publicly traded firms. For the 12-month period ending July 31, 2008, S&P reported the number of increases declined 17.4% on a year over year basis. As detailed in the chart below, the number of firms that increased their dividend for this 12-month period totaled 1,601 versus 1,938 increases for the 12-months ending July 31, 2007.

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Although increases have declined by a relatively large percentage, the number of dividend declarations for the 12-months ending July 31, 2008 are only down 1.5% to 35,422 versus 35,950 declarations for the 12-months that ended July 31, 2007.

Further, comparing the July, 2008 declarations to the July, 2006 declarations (two years earlier) shows dividends declared are up 1.8% (35,422 versus 34,788). And finally, the July 2008 total represents an increase of 5.9% over the total 33,430 achieved in 2005.

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