Dividend Policy Resource

[rapidacid]

Anyone have a go to, one stop shop, resource for dividend policies of companies? I was attempting to analyze BX but couldn't figure if they paid 40% of EPS or similar because their dividend history has been all over the place:

BX Dividend History

[Be Here Now]

I do not know of any one stop resource, covering many companies.

Most companies have a web site with an investor relations section that might cover this.

Every listed company files a 10-K with the SEC. The latest 10-K might cover this.

This is what is called 'due diligence', meaning 'effort'.

[EricL]

One thing I like to do when researching companies is to pull up recent quarterly conference call transcripts on Seeking Alpha and then I'll search the text for "dividend" and see the tone that management has when discussing it and see if it is a priority and if there is any guidance to increases or payout ratio.

[Kerim]

I also usually just visit the company's "investor relations" page. Some are WAY better than others. But I am usually just looking for dividend history and earning history information. It seems like not so many companies have a specific dividend payout policy (like MO's 80 percent payout ratio target) -- or am I overlooking some important information?

[rapidacid]

(10-11-2014, 02:41 PM)EricL Wrote: One thing I like to do when researching companies is to pull up recent quarterly conference call transcripts on Seeking Alpha and then I'll search the text for "dividend" and see the tone that management has when discussing it and see if it is a priority and if there is any guidance to increases or payout ratio.

Good call. I also scan this page a couple times a week and look for green or red text, meaning a dividend was raised or lowered. It's a nice resource to discover random companies that otherwise wouldn't have come up in a screen, but are worth investigating and manually putting on a watchlist for future progress.

(10-11-2014, 05:44 PM)Kerim Wrote: I also usually just visit the company's "investor relations" page. Some are WAY better than others. But I am usually just looking for dividend history and earning history information. It seems like not so many companies have a specific dividend payout policy (like MO's 80 percent payout ratio target) -- or am I overlooking some important information?

You're right, and that's why I was specifically looking for BX's because the payout jumped up and down. CALM is a company I like that has a 40% EPS payout policy so their dividend can fluctuate from quarter to quarter, making screening a bit tougher.