For as long as Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) has been an ASX share, investors have expected big things out of it in the dividend department. After all, when Telstra was progressively privatised in the late 1990s, investors were promised a mature, monopolistic business with strong cash flows and an unassailable market position.
But over the past decade, the game has changed for Telstra. The rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) punched a hole in Telstra's dominance. As has the move away from landline phones to mobile. This has had direct consequences for dividend investors. Longer-term shareholders would acutely remember the infamous 'night of the long knives' dividend cuts that the telco delivered back in 2017.
Until that point, Telstra investors had gotten used to receiving a generous and fully franked 31 cents per share in annual dividends from Telstra. But between 2017 and 2019, this fell to 16 cents per share, a period which also saw steep falls in the Telstra share price. And that is the level of dividends we have seen ever since.
So now that it's dividend paying season on the ASX, what might Telstra hold in store for investors this time around?
What dividend do Telstra shares have up their sleeve?
Well, the ASX 200 telco reported its half-year earnings on 17 February. This included a slight fall in revenues, but a rise in underlying earnings. It also included a dividend announcement.
Telstra's interim dividend for FY2022 will be… 8 cents per share, fully franked. That's exactly the same interim dividend as Telstra has paid out every year since 2019.
If Telstra follows this up with another 8 cents per share for its final dividend later this year, it will come to another year of 16 cents per share dividends for the telco. One can't fault the company for consistency.
So investors will receive this interim dividend on 1 April (April Fool's Day). Its ex-dividend date was 2 March, meaning that anyone who bought Telstra shares on or after that date will miss out this time.
At the current Telstra share price of $3.89, those dividends work out to give Telstra a yield of 4.11%, or 5.87% grossed-up with full franking.
