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Plenty of CEF investors worry about dividend cuts. And for sure, they’re something to keep in mind. But CEFs are not the same as stocks. When we invest in high-quality CEFs, there are a couple other things we need to remember when we catch wind of a cut:
- High-quality CEFs will sometimes reduce payouts by a small amount so they can redeploy capital into oversold bargains. I’ll have more to say on this in a moment, but the upshot is that it holds the potential for us to make more in gains from this move than we lose in dividends.
- As mentioned, these cuts are usually small, reducing the yield only a small amount (again, we’ll demonstrate this below).
Before we go further, we really should stop for a moment and talk about the importance of diversification….Continue reading….
Source: This Is The Biggest Fear CEF Investors Have In This Market
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Critics:
Cash dividends are the most common form of payment and are paid out in currency, usually via electronic funds transfer or a printed paper check. Such dividends are a form of investment income of the shareholder, usually treated as earned in the year they are paid (and not necessarily in the year a dividend was declared).
For each share owned, a declared amount of money is distributed. Thus, if a person owns 100 shares and the cash dividend is 50 cents per share, the holder of the stock will be paid $50. Dividends paid are not classified as an expense, but rather a deduction of retained earnings. Dividends paid does not appear on an income statement, but does appear on the balance sheet.
Different classes of stocks have different priorities when it comes to dividend payments. Preferred stocks have priority claims on a company’s income. A company must pay dividends on its preferred shares before distributing income to common share shareholders.
Stock or scrip dividends are those paid out in the form of additional shares of the issuing corporation, or another corporation (such as its subsidiary corporation). They are usually issued in proportion to shares owned (for example, for every 100 shares of stock owned, a 5% stock dividend will yield 5 extra shares).
Nothing tangible will be gained if the stock is split because the total number of shares increases, lowering the price of each share, without changing the market capitalization, or total value, of the shares held. (See also Stock dilution.) Stock dividend distributions do not affect the market capitalization of a company. Stock dividends are not includable in the gross income of the shareholder for US income tax purposes.
Because the shares are issued for proceeds equal to the pre-existing market price of the shares; there is no negative dilution in the amount recoverable. Property dividends or dividends in specie (Latin for “in kind“) are those paid out in the form of assets from the issuing corporation or another corporation, such as a subsidiary corporation. They are relatively rare and most frequently are securities of other companies owned by the issuer, however, they can take other forms, such as products and services.
Interim dividends are dividend payments made before a company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) and final financial statements. This declared dividend usually accompanies the company’s interim financial statements. Other dividends can be used in structured finance. Financial assets with known market value can be distributed as dividends; warrants are sometimes distributed in this way.
For large companies with subsidiaries, dividends can take the form of shares in a subsidiary company. A common technique for “spinning off” a company from its parent is to distribute shares in the new company to the old company’s shareholders. The new shares can then be traded independently. Some companies have dividend reinvestment plans, or DRIPs, not to be confused with scrips.
DRIPs allow shareholders to use dividends to systematically buy small amounts of stock, usually with no commission and sometimes at a slight discount. In some cases, the shareholder might not need to pay taxes on these re-invested dividends, but in most cases they do. Utilizing a DRIP is a powerful investment tool because it takes advantage of both dollar cost averaging and compounding. Dollar cost averaging is the principle of investing a set amount of capital at recurring intervals.
In this case, if the dividend is paid quarterly, then every quarter you are investing a set amount (the number of shares you own multiplied by the dividend per share). By doing this, you buy more shares when the price is low and less when the price is high. Additionally, the fractional shares that are purchased then begin paying dividends, compounding your investment and increasing the number of shares and total dividend earned each time a dividend distribution is made.
In real estate investment trusts and royalty trusts, the distributions paid often will be consistently greater than the company earnings. This can be sustainable because the accounting earnings do not recognize any increasing value of real estate holdings and resource reserves. If there is no economic increase in the value of the company’s assets then the excess distribution (or dividend) will be a return of capital and the book value of the company will have shrunk by an equal amount.
This may result in capital gains which may be taxed differently from dividends representing distribution of earnings. The distribution of profits by other forms of mutual organization also varies from that of joint-stock companies, though may not take the form of a dividend. In the case of mutual insurance, for example, in the United States, a distribution of profits to holders of participating life policies is called a dividend.
These profits are generated by the investment returns of the insurer’s general account, in which premiums are invested and from which claims are paid. The participating dividend may be used to decrease premiums, or to increase the cash value of the policy. Some life policies pay nonparticipating dividends.
As a contrasting example, in the United Kingdom, the surrender value of a with-profits policy is increased by a bonus, which also serves the purpose of distributing profits. Life insurance dividends and bonuses, while typical of mutual insurance, are also paid by some joint stock insurers. Insurance dividend payments are not restricted to life policies. For example, general insurer State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company can distribute dividends to its vehicle insurance policyholders.
Corporate Taxation When Issuing Dividends”.
Stock Splits and Stock Dividends Management”.
Annual Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(D) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934″
Ex-Dividend Dates: When Are You Entitled to Stock and Cash Dividends”.
Government plans overhaul of dividend framework,
The share price effects of dividend taxes and tax imputation credits”
Companies rush to announce dividends to avoid tax outgo in April”
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