The Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES) share price is down 2% to $52.61 in early trading on Wednesday.
But don't worry, nothing bad is happening.
It's just ex-dividend day.
Wesfarmers share price now trading without dividend benefit
The ex-dividend day is the first day an ASX share trades without its upcoming dividend attached.
As a result, it's common to see ASX shares fall in value on their ex-dividend dates.
Wesfarmers declared a fully franked final dividend of $1.03 per share when it released its full-year FY23 results.
This was a 3% increase on the FY22 final dividend.
The final dividend will be paid to shareholders on 5 October.
Put it together with the interim dividend of 88 cents per share, and we get a total annual dividend of $1.91 per share. This represents an increase of 6.1% year over year.
Based on the Wesfarmers share price currently, this represents a trailing dividend yield of 3.6%.
And don't forget the value of those full franking credits, either.
They go a long way to helping ASX shares investors pay less tax at the end of the year.
A quick recap on FY23
Wesfarmers surprised the market with better-than-expected results this year.
The Bunning owners revealed an 18.2% increase in revenue to $43.5 billion and a 4.8% lift in net profit after tax (NPAT) to $2.47 billion.
The conglomerate's operating cash flow also soared 81.6% to $4.18 billion.
There was a 1.2% increase in Bunnings earnings, a 10.5% increase in Officeworks earnings, a 52.3% rise in Kmart Group earnings, and a 23.9% boost in WesCEF (chemicals energy and fertilisers) earnings.
The Catch loss worsened by $75 million to a loss of $163 million.
Wesfarmers said customers were becoming more value-conscious due to high interest rates and inflation, and were increasingly shopping at budget retailers as a result.
The company sees this as a benefit for its own retail businesses, which are all marketed as low-cost or discount retailers.
Wesfarmers expects low unemployment and strong population growth to support retail demand in FY24.
Population growth will be underpinned by a forecasted net gain of 715,000 migrants over the next two financial years.
