Methodology

Dates

A dividend has up to four dates. They are calendar dates as the company announces them, with no time of day.

Declared

The day the company announced the dividend.

Ex-dividend

The first day the shares trade without the right to the dividend. To receive it, buy the shares before this day.

Record

The day the company checks its register of shareholders to see who will be paid.

Payment

The day the company pays. Holders usually receive the money through their broker.

A pay date isn’t always announced with the dividend; until it is, none is on record. Where a page needs today’s date, to separate upcoming dividends from past ones or to count back 12 months, it uses the date in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), and so does the date at the top of every page. Depending on where you are, that can be a day ahead of or behind your own date for part of the day.

Amounts

Amounts are per share and gross, before any tax is withheld. They are in the currency the company declared, with the decimals it declared, and are never converted into another currency.

Currencies

UK companies usually declare dividends in pence, shown as 45.18p. When amounts are added up, for a holding or a year, pence become pounds: 100 shares at 45.18p is £45.18. South African cents (c) and Israeli agorot (ag.) work the same way, adding up to rand and shekels.

Companies sometimes change the currency they declare in. Annual figures then use the currency of the latest dividend, and dividends in the other currency are left out of the totals, with a note.

Share splits

When a company splits its shares, or consolidates them, the dividends it paid before are adjusted to compare with today’s shares. After a 2-for-1 split, a $1.00 dividend paid before the split counts as $0.50. Annual totals, the chart, growth figures and your holding use the adjusted amounts, and the dividend history notes which amounts were adjusted. Calendar feeds show amounts as declared.

Special dividends

A special dividend is a one-off payment outside the company’s regular pattern. Specials count in annual totals, in a column of their own, and have their own colour in the chart. They are left out of the trailing 12 months, growth, consecutive increases and frequency, so that a one-off doesn’t distort them.

Estimates

An estimate is a dividend the company hasn’t announced yet, projected from its past pattern. It is set in italics and marked est., and has no declared or record date. When the company announces the dividend, the declared figures replace the estimate. Estimates count towards the year they fall in, and appear in calendar feeds as tentative events, with “(est.)” in the title.

Figures on company pages

The key facts count years by ex-dividend date. The chart and the annual totals can count them by payment date instead.

Annual totals

Each year adds up the dividends per share that went ex-dividend in it. You can group them by payment year instead; a dividend whose pay date isn’t known yet then counts in its ex-dividend year. Years without dividends, between the first year on record and this one, show as zero.

This year is still running, so its figures are marked as to date. They include dividends declared for the year but not yet paid, and any estimates. Growth compares a complete year’s regular dividends with the year before; it isn’t shown for this year, or when the year before had none.

Dividend, trailing 12 months

The regular dividends per share that went ex-dividend in the last 365 days, today included. Specials are left out. It looks back, so it isn’t a forecast.

5-year growth, compound annual

The yearly rate at which regular dividends per share grew over the last five complete years: last year’s total against the total five years before it. Growing from $1.00 to $1.40 over five years is 6.96% a year. It isn’t shown when either year has no regular dividends on record.

Consecutive annual increases

The number of complete years in a row, up to last year, in which regular dividends per share were higher than the year before. A year with the same total, or a lower one, ends the run. When the run reaches back to the first year in our records, it is shown with a plus sign, because the company may have raised its dividend before then too.

Frequency

Worked out from the gaps between the company’s latest nine regular ex-dividend dates, including any still to come. The middle gap (the median) decides, so one late or skipped payment doesn’t change the result.

A single regular dividend on record shows as irregular. When the latest regular ex-dividend date is more than 400 days ago, and more than two and a half times the usual gap, the frequency shows as “None in the last year”, or as irregular if a later dividend is already known.

Your holding

Enter a number of shares on a company page to see what they received: each dividend per share, adjusted for splits, times your shares. It assumes you held that many shares on every ex-dividend date, and the amounts are gross, before withholding tax. Fractional shares work, to six decimal places.

The number is kept only in the page address (for example ?shares=100), so you can bookmark the page or share it. divrecord doesn’t save it.

Calendar feeds

A calendar feed is a web address that a calendar app subscribes to. On the Calendar feed page you choose up to 100 companies; divrecord stores that list and gives it an address ending in .ics.

• Each dividend becomes an all-day event on its ex-dividend date, its payment date, or both, titled like “KO ex-dividend · $0.53”. The event’s notes give the company, its ISIN, the amount per share as declared, the known dates and a link to the company page.
• A feed covers the last 13 months and everything ahead, estimates included. Estimates are tentative events, with “(est.)” in the title.
• Reminders, if you want them, go off at 09:00 your time, on the day or 1, 3 or 7 days before. Some calendar apps ignore reminders in subscribed calendars.
• The address carries how the feed is shown: which dates, the reminder and the calendar’s name. Changing those keeps the same calendar. The companies can’t change: for a different list, make a new calendar, starting from the old one if you like.
• Calendar apps refresh subscriptions on their own schedule. The feed asks for every 12 hours; some apps take a day. A downloaded .ics file is a one-off copy and doesn’t update.

Updates and corrections

Records change when companies announce dividends or change a date. Pages pick up changes within about an hour.

If a date or amount looks wrong, write to [email protected] with the company’s ISIN and, if you can, a link to its announcement. Each company page has a “Report a correction” link that fills in the ISIN.