Hey, Where's My Dividend?

On Sept. 7, I bought 100 shares of Telus, fully expecting that I would receive the 61-cent dividend payable on Oct. 1. However, when I checked my statement I did not receive the dividend. What gives? The bad news is that you aren’t going to receive that dividend, because you aren’t entitled to it. The good news is that you can avoid this sort of frustration in the future by understanding four key dividend dates – the dividend declaration date, ex-dividend date, record date and payable date.

When a company declares a dividend, it doesn’t just start writing cheques immediately. Instead, it sets a date in the future, called the record date, which it uses to determine which shareholders are entitled to receive the dividend. It’s called a record date because you have to be a shareholder of record – that is, on the company’s books – as of that date in order to get the dividend. In Telus’s case, the record date was Sept. 10. When a stock begins “trading ex-dividend,” it means that, if you buy the stock on or after this date, you will not be entitled to receive the next dividend. In Telus’s case, the stock started trading ex-dividend on Sept. 6.

Source: Globe and Mail

Related Articles:
- Warning Signs of an Imminent Dividend Cut
- 7 Higher-Yielding Consumer Stocks To Build Your Yield
- 2 High-Yield Investments To Increase Income While Waiting On Dividend Growth
- 6 Healthcare Dividend Stocks For A Healthy Portfolio
- 11 Low-Debt, Higher-Yielding Dividend Stocks