When buying shares, to be eligible to receive the dividend you must have purchased your
shareholding before, and held the shares up to and including,
the ex-dividend date. You can then sell the shares at any point after the market opens
on the ex-dividend date and still receive the dividend payment. If you are new
to dividend investing, we have a guide to dividends and
dividend definitions. If you have any questions, notice
any errors in the data displayed or have any other feedback please
don't hesitate to contact us.
Over the long term, and especially when reinvested, the most impressive returns in the stockmarket
come from income in the form of dividend payments. Before buying shares for income investing, use our website
to filter ex-dividend dates and find dividend paying shares according to:
- Index: FTSE 100, FTSE 250, FTSE Small Cap, FTSE Fledgling and AIM
- Ex-Div Date: when the share is going ex-dividend
- Payment Date: when the dividend is due to be paid
If you'd like to check the latest share prices of the companies listed, you have the option of displaying
the EPIC as a link to Yahoo Finance. This will allow you to see the share price of the company
concerned, delayed by 15 minutes. You can then divide the value of the Amount column (note: if it's in cents (¢), you'll need to
convert it at a website such as www.xe.com first) in the table above by the
share price and multiply by 100 to see what the next dividend payment would yield were you to purchase shares at
the current share price.
When considering whether to invest in a company for income on the stockmarket, investors will often look towards
benchmark yields before deciding whether to buy shares. One such benchmark is the yield of the 10 year gilt.
Most investors will demand a premium to the 10 year gilt yield, which, as a government-backed asset, is seen as a far less
risky investment compared to equities. As a result, you will most likely be looking for a premium to this. However, a caveat is that
anything more than around 1.5 times this may be too good to be true and prove to be shortlived. Other benchmarks
include the FTSE dividend yield, with investors keen to confirm a dividend is competitive with the wider market.