Access Bank Plc said it will pay a final dividend of 25 kobo for every unit of share, bringing the total dividend for the financial year ended December 31, 2018, to 50 kobo per share.
Subject to approval and appropriate withholding tax, the dividends will, on Thursday April 11th, be paid electronically to shareholders whose names appear on the Registers of Members.
It is all about e-dividend – Also, shareholders who have completed the e-dividend registration and mandated the Registrar to pay their dividends directly into their bank accounts, will receive their dividends on April 25th, 2019.
The Register of Shareholders will, however, be closed on Friday, April 12, 2019.
Understanding dividend
A dividend is a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, the corporation is able to re-invest the profit in the business (called retained earnings) and pay a proportion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Distribution to shareholders may be in cash (usually a deposit into a bank account) or, if the corporation has a dividend reinvestment plan, the amount can be paid by the issue of further shares or share repurchase.
In other words, a dividend is allocated as a fixed amount per share with shareholders receiving a dividend in proportion to their shareholding. For the joint-stock company, paying dividends is not an expense; rather, it is the division of after-tax profits among shareholders.
Laudable bank performance?
The Nigerian tier-1 bank recorded a laudable financial result for the 2018 financial year, as Gross Earnings increased from N459 billion in 2017 to N528 billion in 2018.
More so, Profit before tax jumped from N78.1 billion in 2017 to N103 billion in 2018. Profit after tax rose from N60 billion in 2017 to N94 billion in 2018.
Earnings per share rose from N2.11 in 2017 to N3.31 in 2018.
However, Access Bank Plc closed at N5.95 on Thursday’s trading session of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).