The ASX 200 funeral services provider InvoCare Ltd (ASX: IVC) has exploded back onto the ASX's centre stage this week. Yesterday, the company revealed that it had received a takeover approach from private equity firm TPG Asia.
After news came out that TPG Asia and the Singapore-based Blue Eternal had amassed a significant quantity of Invocare shares, the company revealed that it had received a preliminary, non-binding indicative offer to acquire Invocare in full at a share price of $12.65.
As a result, the Invocare share price has rocketed by close to 35% this week. Today, it is going for a flat $12 a share at the time of writing.
But Invocare has been listed on the ASX for a very long time – more than 20 years in fact. And it has been a well-known share for income investors for years, driven by the sobering fact that death, (and funerals), is one of life's only certainties.
So today, let's examine how much passive income in the form of dividend payments Invocare shares have spun out to investors over the past five years.
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Passive income from Invocare shares? Here's this company's dividend history
Well, sadly for dividend investors, the income that Invocare shares have been paying out has been deteriorating in recent years. The company's dividend high watermark came back in 2018 when investors banked total annual dividend payments worth 45 cents per share.
But by 2021, this had fallen to just 16.5 cents per share. Last year, Invocare upped its game a little by sending out a total of 25 cents per share. But let's plot the whole course.
So here is Invocare's dividend history since 2018:
| Year | Annual Invocare dividends per share |
| 2018 | 45 cents per share |
| 2019 | 37 cents per share |
| 2020 | 29 cents per share |
| 2021 | 16.5 cents per share |
| 2022 | 25 cents per share |
That's a total of 152.5 cents per share since 2018. On today's share price, that works out to be a cumulative yield of around 12.71%. Yet the Invocare share price has fallen by 15.4% over the past five years.
So although the dividends have put a big dent in these capital losses for investors, they haven't been enough to erase the losses investors have endured over this period.
Invocare has declared a final dividend of 11 cents per share to kick off 2023. The cash will be arriving in investors' bank accounts on 6 April next month. This dividend will be a 4.35% drop from the 11.5 cents per share payout shareholders received in 2022.
At the current Invocare share price, this ASX 200 funeral services company has a trailing dividend yield of 2.04%.
