Many newbie investors in the stock market seem to forget that capital appreciation is not the only way to earn money. As we’ve explained before in an article on How to make money using stocks, another form of income that stockholders receive is the dividend.
Dividends may come in the form of cash or stocks. Cash dividends are, obviously, cash amounts distributed to stockholders on record during a certain date. Stock dividends, on the other hand, are additional shares of the company given to stockholders at no cost.
In the Philippines, several stocks have high dividend yields which further increases the income potential of a stock or compensates for its price decrease.
Take, for example, PLDT (Code: TEL), a company that consistently pays the highest dividends in the Philippine Stock Exchange. If you bought a TEL stock at the start of January 2011 at a price of P2,550.00, your stock is down 16% by the 3rd quarter of the year. But since the company paid P222.00 dividends per share this year, this cash dividend is already real income that stockholders pocket. Thus the 16% paper loss in TEL is compensated by the dividends, bringing down the loss to just 7%.
In contrast, if you bought a stock of First Philippine Holdings (Code: FPH) at P62.60 during the start of the year, your capital loss by the 3rd quarter is 15%. The company in 2011 paid only P1.00 dividend per share. Thus, the total loss has only been reduced from 15% to 13%.
TEL may have higher capital losses than FPH, but factoring in the dividends distributed by the companies, a stockholder is actually losing more in FPH compared to TEL. That is the impact of dividend income.
In the Philippines, the top 10 stocks paying the highest dividend yield are shown in the table below.
Top 10 PSE Stock with Highest Cash Dividend Yield – 2011
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Dividend Yield is computed as total dividends paid during the year divided by the price of the stock. The dividends considered are cash dividends whose ex-dates are from January to September 2011. The stock prices used are the closing prices on October 6.
Some companies pay regular and special dividends. Regular dividends are usually paid at a specific time of the year, while special dividends are not recurring, meaning, they are given only in certain occasions such as when the company experienced high profitability.
Take note that some companies vary their dividend payouts every year, so stockholders should check whether a company is paying a stable dividend yield year after year or merely giving out an unexpectedly high yield that would not be repeated in succeeding years.
In the end, investors should remember to consider the dividend yield when buying stocks. Cash or stock dividends paid out by companies provide additional income and also provide some sort of cushion on capital losses, especially during bearish times like what we are seeing in the current state of the market.
Cash Dividend Yields of other PSE stocks – 2011
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Update (December 12, 2012): High Dividend-Paying PSE Stocks in 2012
