It's always a big deal when an ASX 200 share trades ex-dividend on the ASX. Not only do income investors see a dividend payment locked in if they own the share that is trading ex-dividend, but we also usually see a big share price drop when this event occurs.
Every time an ASX 200 share pays a dividend, it must also nominate an ex-dividend date. This date is when the company finalises which investors will receive the said dividend. If an investor owns shares of a company when it trades ex-dividend, they will be eligible to receive the dividend in question.
But if an investor buys shares on or after the ex-dividend date, they miss out.
This exact scenario is set to occur on the ASX this week with one prominent ASX 200 share – Metcash Limited (ASX: MTS).
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The ex-dividend date of this ASX 200 share is coming up fast
Shareholders of the IGA, Mitre 10 and Home Hardware owner learnt about their next dividend last month when Metcash reported its full-year earnings for FY2023. As we covered at the time, these earnings saw the company reveal a 5.7% rise in revenues to $18.1 billion and a 4.6% increase in underlying profit after tax to $307.5 million.
These enabled Metcash to announce a final dividend of 11 cents per share, fully franked. That's flat with last year's equivalent dividend, as well as a drop from the January interim dividend of 11.5 cents per share (also fully franked).
But the ex-dividend date for this Metcash payment is coming up fast. In fact, it is scheduled for tomorrow. That means that if any investor out there is planning on building a Metcash position, they have until the end of trading today to buy the shares if they want to receive this latest dividend.
If they wait until tomorrow, this payout will pass them by, and they will have to wait until the next dividend, which will probably arrive in January 2024.
As such, we can expect a big fall in the Metcash share price on the ASX 200 tomorrow morning when the value of that dividend leaves the company's shares.
Right now, the Metcash share price offers a trailing dividend yield of 6.02%.
This ASX 200 share has had a rough year in 2023, down by almost 4%. Metcash shares have also lost just over 11% of their value over the past 12 months:
