ASX earnings season continues today, with some major shares in the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) revealing their latest numbers to investors this Thursday. One of those ASX 200 shares is mining stock South32 Ltd (ASX: S32). Income investors might want to pay attention to the new dividend that South32 just unveiled.
As we went through this morning, it was an interesting set of earnings for investors to go through. The diversified miner reported US$2.81 billion in revenue from continuing operations for its first half of FY 2026, a 3% drop on the same period in FY 2025.
However, underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 9% to US$1.11 billion. Profit after tax attributable to members came in at US$464 million, up an impressive 29%.
The market is reacting positively to what the company had to say today (thus far anyway). That's going off the fact that the South32 share price is currently (at the time of writing) up a healhty 1.2% to $4.64 a share.
But let's dig into the latest South32 dividend that has just been revealed.
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South32 shares up as dividend hiked 15%
The rise in earnings and profits that the miner showed off this morning enabled South32 to declare an interim dividend of 3.9 US cents per share. This dividend will come with full franking credits attached, as is South32's habit. It represents a payout ratio of 40% of South32's underlying earnings, keeping with the company's dividend policy of paying out a minimum of 40% of its earnings as dividends.
We don't yet know what the final amount will be in Australian dollar terms. As of today's exchange rate, investors can pencil in about 5.5 cents per share in our local currency.
This latest interim dividend is a meaningful payout for shareholders, as it represents a hefty 14.71% hike over the interim dividend, worth 3.4 US cents per share, that investors bagged in 2025.
Together with last year's final dividend, worth 2.6 US cents per share, this 2026 interim dividend takes South32's 12-month payouts to 6.5 US cents per share.
Eligible shareholders will receive this interim dividend on 2 April. The ex-dividend date has been set for 5 March next month, though. If investors wish to receive this dividend from South32 but don't yet own shares, they will need to do so by 4 March. South32 is not running a dividend reinvestment plan (DRP) for this payout, though, so investors have no choice but to take the dividend as a cash payment.
South32 shares are currently trading on a trailing dividend yield of 2%.
