It's shaping up to be another big week of earnings reports this week on the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO). We've already heard from the ASX big four banks. This week, we have Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES). And, of course, Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) shares.
Yes, Telstra, the ASX 200 telco giant, is scheduled to give its half-year earnings for FY 2022 on Thursday, 17 February, the same day as Wesfarmers, coincidentally. So what might investors be looking forward to when we hear from Telstra?
Well, it's worth mentioning that we've already heard quite a lot out of this telco over 2022 so far. Just last week, the company announced it had entered into a $100 million deal with the internet of things (IoT) company Intellihub Group. As my Fool colleague Monica covered at the time, this will result in "Telstra providing more than 4 million IoT SIMS to the company within the next decade".
Earlier this month, we also got the news that Telstra would be spending up to $1.6 billion on two "nation-building" projects – the ViaSat satellite program and a new, faster dual fibre network.
So investors will probably be keen for some updates on either or both of these recent announcements. Or perhaps any new plans to further monetise Telstra's existing stack of infrastructure assets.
Investors were impressed with last year's sale of 50% of the InfraCo Towers business, so it's possible we might hear of some additional plans involving other Telstra infrastructure.
What about the Telstra dividend?
Apart from that, it's likely investors will have their eye on any dividend announcements Telstra might make.
Telstra has been paying out an annual dividend of 16 cents per share for a few years now. That's a payout level the company has been able to hold steady after a few years of dividend cuts last decade. But investors might be hoping for that long-awaited pay raise from Telstra. Telstra hasn't raised its dividend since 2015.
Well, according to broker Morgans, investors shouldn't hold their breath. Morgans recently forecast another 16 cents per share annual dividend for Telstra for FY 2022, as well as the same for FY 2023. That might disappoint some investors if that turns out to be accurate. But even so, that would mean Telstra's arguably-solid current trailing yield of 3.95% (5.64% grossed-up) is here to stay.
At the current Telstra share price of $4.06, this ASX 200 telco has a market capitalisation of $47.58 billion.
