The S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is enjoying a decent afternoon of trading so far this Thursday after an initial dip this morning. At the time of writing, the ASX 200 is up by 0.09% at 7,377 points. But one ASX 200 share is faring far worse today. That would be the James Hardie Industries plc (ASX: JHX) share price.
James Hardie shares are currently sitting at a flat $54 each. That's down a nasty 2.7% from where they closed at yesterday. So what's gone so wrong with this ASX 200 building materials company today?
Well, before you James Hardie shareholders get too worried, let's put your minds at ease. Today's share price drop can largely be put down to perhaps the best reason for a company to lose value from its share price. James Hardie traded ex-dividend today.
James Hardie share price drops after dividend leaves the building
Yes, the value of James Hardie's upcoming final dividend payment for FY2021 left the company's share price this morning. James Hardie will be forking out a dividend of 40 US cents (or an estimated 54 Australian cents) on 17 December, just in time for Christmas!
The dividend will not be franked, as is usually the case with this company these days. This reflects the fact that James Hardie does most of its business overseas. Thus, it does not generate franking credits from paying company tax here in Australia.
That's not quite as large as the special dividend of US 70 cents per share (89.94 Australian cents) that James Hardie doled out back in April. But in saying that, that dividend was a special payment that made up for the absence of dividends over 2020. Before 2020, James Hardie's last dividend was a payment of 10 US cents per share. Investors received that payment on 20 December 2019.
So what does this latest dividend give the James Hardie share price? Well, if we take the last dividend payment together with this upcoming one, we get a yield of 2.67%. If we just annualise this upcoming payment (which assumes James Hardie's next dividend will also be 40 US cents), we can say that James Hardie has a potential forward yield of roughly 2%.
At the current James Hardie share price of $54, this ASX 200 share has a market capitalisation of $24.77 billion.
