Investors who own Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL) shares are in for a treat this Wednesday. Sure, the Coles share price is having a decent time in today's trading session. At the time of writing, the ASX 200 supermarket blue chip is up a happy 0.28% at $18.08 a share.
But that's not the only positive thing happening with this stock.
Today happens to be Coles' dividend payday.
Last month, we discussed Coles' latest earnings report, covering the full 2024 financial year.
As we went through at the time, these earnings were well received by investors. Coles reported a 5.7% rise in revenues to $43.6 billion for FY2024, along with a 7.3% rise in underlying earnings before interest and tax to $2.18 billion. That helped drive a 4.1% increase in underlying net profits after tax (NPAT) to $1.21 billion.
With earnings per share (EPS) rising 2.1% to 84.6 cents per share, Coles was able to reveal a final, fully franked dividend of 32 cents per share. Together with Coles' interim dividend of 36 cents from March (also fully franked), this took the company's full-year payouts to 68 cents per share. That represents a dividend payout ratio of 80.38%.
As we went into last month, Coles revealed that the ex-dividend date for this latest dividend payment would roll around on 3 September this month. As such, anyone wishing to bag this payout from Coles had to be on the record owning Coles shares as of the market close on 2 September.
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Coles shares pay out final dividend for 2024
For those lucky investors, today is dividend payday. Yep, Coles is forking out that final 32 cents per share dividend this Wednesday, 25 September.
So if you made the cut for this dividend but haven't already checked your bank account, chances are there's a nice surprise waiting for you. Or else, if you went for the optional dividend reinvestment plan (DRP) that was running for this dividend, you might have been issued some new Coles shares instead.
2024 has been a great year for Coles dividend investors. The 68 cents per share forked out this year is the largest annual dividend payload Coles has doled out since its ASX debut in 2018. Paired with Coles shares' 14.6% rise over the past 12 months and 11.9% gain in 2024 to date, investors arguably don't have much to complain about right now.
At the current Coles share price, this ASX 200 blue chip stock has a dividend yield of 3.76%.
