Friday Email: 06 September 2013
Every Friday morning our lead analyst Mark Riding sends out his weekly run-down and upcoming events in the investor calendar, like this one:
The market continues to be jittery with no strong direction. It has been a very quiet week as far as company results are concerned, but the main event clearly was the sale by Vodafone of its stake in Verizon wireless which we covered in our dividend of the week recently with the expectation of that happening. The price achieved was at the high-end of expectations. DividendMax clients who hold Vodafone will be pleased to know that we also cover Verizon. They will soon become Verizon shareholders.
The quiet week did result in some good returns to shareholders as Microfocus outlined a 'D' share scheme that will return 60p per share to shareholders; effectively a special dividend. Also Hargreaves Lansdown produced a bumper dividend increase of 31%. Dechra Pharmaceuticals increased their full year dividend by 14% and Genus by 10%. Go-ahead Group maintained their final dividend at 81p.
The week ahead like last week promises to be relatively quiet on the corporate front with very few company results out. However it is busier than last week. The market will be interesting though with todays US jobless figures and the ongoing tensions in Syria inevitably affecting market sentiment.
The Friday email is delivered to over 20,000 subscriber’s every week, and remains a widely read run-down of recent events and what investors can expect in the week ahead written by our chief analyst Mark Riding.
It’s included as part of the free DividendMax trial.
Read next: 30 August 2013
The short week was very very busy interms of interim declarations. The highlight for me was Admiral who produced another really good performance in the face of tough competition in the motor insurance market. They increased their dividend by 8.4% to give a yield over 11% on the 3 dividend optimiser. Last year the wife of the founder Henry Engelhardt purchased a large number of shares in the face of a drop in the share price following the results. She may use their massive dividend payout to do so again. They are yielding close to 4% on this dividend alone and a similar sized dividend in six months time is on the cards.