With WDP as the first player in the Bel20, spring reopens on Wednesday for investors, who will receive their dividends in their accounts in the coming weeks and months.
On Wednesday, a spring classic as big as the Tour of Flanders starts for the Bel20: the dividend season. Spring in Europe is traditionally the time when most companies pay out their dividends.
The reason is that most annual reports for the past financial year are published in the spring and the annual meetings take place. That is the moment when shareholders give the green light for profit distributions to shareholders.
Proximus
started on Tuesday and paid out a gross dividend of 0.7 euros per share. But now that the telecom share is no longer part of the Bel20, the honor in the star index falls to the warehouse rental company WDP
which clipped a coupon of 1.12 euros gross on Wednesday.
The dividend payments are a headwind for Bel20. After all, the index only takes into account the stock prices, not the dividends paid. Every time a Bel20 member detaches a coupon, it is deducted from the price, and therefore also from the Bel20. This will result in 122 points being removed from the Bel20 this financial year (see Table), although this optical drop in points does not mean impoverishment for the investor. He will receive the equivalent of the ‘lost points’ in the form of a dividend, after deduction of taxes, in his account.
Full screen display
The Bel20 haircut has a negative impact on the index. And then Bel20 is ‘lucky’ that the biotech pride Argenx, number two in the index by market value, does not pay out a dividend. Index heavyweight AB InBev increased its dividend by a tenth, or 7 cents, to 0.82 euros per share. This means that the brewer’s dividend is still significantly lower than historically usual.
Another heavyweight more than compensates for those two ‘economical’ tenors this spring. The banking and insurance group KBC will pay out a final dividend of 3.15 euros gross on May 13, which will make the Bel20 20 points lighter in one go.
