By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted
Dividends are shares of a company’s profit paid back to shareholders who have invested in it. Kateryna / stock.adobe.com
The good results of automotive groups explain this historically high amount, according to a study.
The amount of dividends paid out worldwide in the first quarter increased by 12% over one year to reach a new record, thanks in particular to significant exceptional payments from car groups, according to a study released Wednesday. Payouts to shareholders amounted to $326.7 billion between January and March, after already a record in 2022, driven by banks, oil producers and automakers, which offset lower profits for mining groups .
Exceptional dividend payments reached $28.8 billion in the first quarter, “their second highest level of all time(after Q1 2014), according to et manager Janus Henderson’s report. “Ford and Volkswagen accounted for nearly a third of extraordinary dividends“of the first three months of the year and “dividends paid by the automotive sector were ten times higherthan last year, notes Janus Henderson’s press release.
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France, far from a record
“Volkswagen caused a stir in the first quarter, paying out a $6.3 billion extraordinary dividend with proceeds from Porsche’s IPO late last year“, completes the report. For Ben Lofthouse, head of Janus Henderson’s global equities team, the upward dividend momentum “is all the more impressive given that 2022 has been a difficult year for the global economy with high inflation, rising interest rates, conflict and some continued lockdowns in the face of Covid-19“.
In France, it was the luxury groups Hermès and Kering that contributed to bringing growth in dividends, excluding exceptional items, to 11.6%, with 2.8 billion euros, out of a total of 3 billion dollars paid by French companies, far from a record, during a usually quiet quarter in terms of dividends. The first-quarter dividend champion was Danish shipping group Moller Maersk, which distributed $11.7 billion, “of which a little more than half in the form of an extraordinary dividendwhich reflects a record net profit recorded in 2022, thanks to the increase in container freight prices.
For 2023 as a whole, Janus Henderson is revising his forecast upwards and “now forecasts global dividends to be $1.64 trillion, equating to 5.2% global growth“. Another way to remunerate shareholders, share buybacks also reached a record in 2022.