The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ASX: ANZ) share price is having a tough start to the week.
In morning trade, the banking giant's shares are down almost 4% to $24.54.
Why is the ANZ share price falling?
The good news for shareholders is that the weakness in the ANZ share price has nothing to do with a broker downgrade or a trading update.
Instead, today's decline is almost entirely attributable to the bank's shares trading ex-dividend this morning for its latest dividend.
When a share trades ex-dividend, it means that the rights to an upcoming dividend payment are now settled and will remain with shareholders that owned them at the close of play the previous trading session.
As a result, anyone buying shares today, will be buying shares without the rights to the dividend and they will remain with the seller. And given that you wouldn't want to pay for something you won't receive, the ANZ share price has dropped to reflect this.
The ANZ dividend
Last month, ANZ released its full year results for FY 2022. For the 12 months ended 30 September, ANZ reported a 16% increase in statutory profit after tax to $7,119 million and a 5% lift in cash profit from continuing operations to $6,515 million.
This allowed the ANZ board to declare a fully franked final dividend of 74 cents per share, bringing its full year dividend to 146 cents per share. This was up from 142 cents per share in FY 2021.
Based on the ANZ share price at Friday's close, that final dividend equated to a yield of almost 3%. Eligible shareholders can now look forward to receiving this dividend next month on 15 December.
