It's been a pretty dreary start to the trading week for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) so far this Monday. At the time of writing, the ASX 200 is down by 0.42% at close to 7,200 points. But it's been an even worse start for the Novonix Ltd (ASX: NVX) share price.
Novonix shares are presently down a nasty 3.84%, going for $3.51 apiece so far today. That's certainly a lot closer to this battery and graphite company's 52-week low of $2.07 than its 52-week high of $12.47.
Novonix investors have been on a wild ride over the past year or two. Between July and December 2021, Novonix shares rose more than 400%, driven by investor excitement over the company's future-facing plans. But the company has comprehensively fallen back to earth over 2022 thus far. It's now down by more than 66% year to date, as well as by more than 70% from its December highs.
So have investors at least been comforted by some dividend payments from Novonix? After all, dividends can be very welcome for investors watching the value of a company fall. It can cushion some of the pain, or else enable an investor to buy even more shares for a discount.
Is Novonix an ASX dividend share?
So, is Novonix a dividend-paying ASX share? Well, the answer is a definitive no.
Novonix does not currently pay a dividend. In fact, it never has.
Novonix is arguably not in a position to pay dividends, even if it wanted to. Back in February, Novonix delivered its half-year earnings report. This informed investors that for the six months ending 31 December 2021, the company reported a statutory after-tax loss of $28.8 million. That was a lot more than the loss of $10.77 million in H1 FY20.
For a company to be able to responsibly and sustainably fund dividend payments, it must first be comfortably profitable. Judging by those numbers, that is not a label we can put on Novonix just yet. So investors probably shouldn't expect big things when it comes to dividends from the company for the foreseeable future.
