Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ASX: ANZ) has today gone ex-dividend, which has seen its shares drop by $1.06 or 3.1%.
The bank announced a higher than expected 11% increase in profit last week which was driven by strong growth in its international divisions as well as growth in its mortgage portfolio locally. As such, it was able to increase its dividend by 14% to 83 cents per share (cps), which was also above analysts' expectations of 80 cps.
The shares have fallen slightly more than the dividend amount with Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) also having dropped by 0.4% and 0.2% respectively. National Australia Bank Ltd. (ASX: NAB), on the other hand, has risen by 0.2%.
Having gone ex-dividend, ANZ now trades on a fully franked dividend yield of 5.3%.
Unfortunately for investors, today's fall in price does not present as a good buying opportunity. It seems that the banks are now fully priced and are very unlikely to deliver market-beating returns in the long-run as investors turn to other, more attractive investment prospects.