Yesterday was a top day for the Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL) share price. Coles finished the day up 0.45% at a flat $18 a share. That leaves its year-to-date performance at a healthy 9.36% for 2023 so far.
Today is also going to be a good day for Coles shareholders, no matter what the share price does. That's because today is payday for the Coles dividend.
Last month, Coles reported its half-year earnings for the six months to December 2022.
As we covered at the time, the ASX 200 grocery giant reported a 17.1% rise in net profit after tax (NPAT) to $643 million. This came with a 17.2% lift in earnings per share (EPS), up to 48.3 cents per share. This enabled Coles to announce an interim dividend of 36 cents per share, fully franked.
Coles' biggest dividend ever is coming to a bank account near you
This payment is the highest dividend Coles has ever paid out in its four-and-a-bit years of ASX life. It represents a pleasing 9.09% rise over last year's interim dividend of 33 cents per share. Not to mention an even more impressive 20% increase over the inaugural interim dividend of 30 cents per share that we saw back in 2020.
With this latest dividend, Coles is on track to continue its trend of delivering annual dividend rises. The company paid out 57.5 cents per share in 2020, 61 cents per share in 2021, and 63 cents per share in 2023.
Eligibility for new investors for this dividend closed on 2 March when Coles traded ex-dividend.
But for those lucky investors who owned Coles shares before then, today is the day the dividend will be arriving in your bank account. Or else reinvested back into additional Coles shares if you've opted for the company's dividend reinvestment plan (DRP).
At the last Coles share price of $18, this divided, combined with last year's final payment, gives Coles a trailing dividend yield of 3.67%. That grosses up to 5.24% with the company's full franking credits.
Despite Coles' stellar year-to-date share price performance, this ASX 200 blue chip share remains up by just 0.22% over the past 12 months:
