The Northern Star Resources Ltd (ASX: NST) share price is heading south during early afternoon trade.
This comes despite the price of gold elevating 0.62% today and the company not releasing any market-sensitive news.
At the time of writing, Northern Star shares are down 1.87% to $7.33.
Why are Northern Star shares falling on Tuesday?
Investors are offloading Northern Star shares as they trade ex-dividend today.
This means if you purchased the company's shares yesterday or before, you will be eligible for the latest dividend.
However, when a company's shares trade ex-dividend, the share price tends to fall in proportion to the dividend paid out. This can also vary on how the market is tracking for the day as well as investor sentiment.
For those eligible for Northern Star's final dividend, shareholders will receive a payment of 11.5 cents per share on 29 September.
The dividend is fully franked.
Are Northern Star shares a buy now?
Following the financial scorecard for the full year, a number of brokers weighed in on the Northern Star share price.
As reported by ANZ Share Investing, analysts at Macquarie raised their price target by 5% to $10.50 for Northern Star shares. Based on the current share price, this implies an upside of roughly 43%.
In addition, the team at Citi had a more bullish price, raising its target by 0.9% to $10.90 apiece.
On the other hand, UBS had a slightly bearish outlook, cutting its price target by 2% to $9.60. Nonetheless, this still indicates an upside of 31% from where Northern Star shares trade today.
Northern Star share price summary
Since April 2022, the Northern Star share price has come under selling pressure due to macroenvironmental headwinds.
This includes strong inflationary movements which have prompted central banks to lift interest rates.
Year-to-date, the gold miner's shares are down 22%.
Based on today's price, Northern Star commands a market capitalisation of roughly $8.70 billion. It has a dividend yield of 2.64%.
