The BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) share price is missing out on the market rebound on Thursday.
At the time of writing, the mining giant's shares are down 1.5% to $41.66.
This compares unfavourably to a gain of 0.6% by the ASX 200 index.
Image source: Getty Images
Why is the BHP share price underperforming?
Today's decline has nothing to do with a bad update, iron ore weakness, or a broker downgrade.
Instead, it has been caused by the Big Australian's shares going ex-dividend this morning for its upcoming final dividend of FY 2025.
When a company's shares trade ex-dividend, it means that the rights to an upcoming dividend are settled.
As a result, new buyers of those shares won't be eligible to receive the payout when pay day arrives. Instead, the dividend will be paid to the seller of its shares, even though they will no longer own them when it is paid.
And as a dividend forms part of a company's valuation, a share price will tend to drop in line with the value of the dividend on the ex-dividend date to reflect this.
After all, you wouldn't want to be paying for something that you won't receive.
The BHP dividend
Last month, BHP released its FY 2025 results and declared a fully franked final dividend of 60 US cents per share. This may be down heavily year on year, but it is still US$3 billion (A$4.5 billion) that is being dished out to shareholders.
To put that into context, A$4.5 billion would be enough to buy Bank of Queensland Ltd (ASX: BOQ) or Lovisa Holdings Ltd (ASX: LOV).
Based on the BHP share price at yesterday's close of $42.29 and current exchange rates, this equates to a relatively attractive 2.1% dividend yield for investors.
This means that a $20,000 investment in BHP shares would pull in $420 of income from this interim dividend on pay day. And that is just its final dividend.
When is pay day?
If you are an eligible shareholder, it won't be too long until you receive your pay check from BHP.
According to its results, the mining giant intends to pay this final dividend to shareholders later this month on 25 September.
Should you buy the dip?
Most brokers appear to believe that the BHP share price is about fair value right now.
However, the team at Morgan Stanley is more bullish than the rest and has an overweight rating and $46.50 price target on its shares.
