U.S. Companies Add $19.0 Billion to Dividend Payments in First Quarter

NEW YORK, April 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Standard & Poor's, the world's leading index provider, announced today that dividend increases rose 27.8% during the first quarter of 2011 to 510 from the 399 recorded during the first quarter of 2010. Of the approximately 7,000 publicly owned companies that report dividend information to Standard & Poor's, only 30 decreased their dividend payment during the first quarter of 2011 versus the 48 that lowered their dividend payment during the first quarter of 2010.

"If dividends were a paycheck, dividend investors would have received a 6.7% raise in the first quarter," says Howard Silverblatt, Senior Index Analyst at S&P Indices. "Dividend increases were up 27.8% in the first quarter, with dividend decreases off 92% from the record setting first quarter of 2009. On a dollar basis, dividend investors lost $43.8 billion in the first quarter of 2009; for the first quarter of 2011 they added back $19 billion."

Silverblatt notes that yields for paying issues decreased slightly to 2.39% at the end of the first quarter, compared to 2.41% at the close of 2010. However, more issuers were paying dividends, with 39.3% of the issues paying a regular cash dividend, compared to 37.9% at year-end 2010.  

Additionally, Silverblatt reports that individual investors have saved $274 billion on qualified dividend tax cuts from 2003 through the 2010 period. "The two-year extension of the lower dividend tax rate will add another $74 billion directly into the hands of investors, with a portion of it going back into the market via reinvestment programs, thereby supporting stock prices."

For 2011, Silverblatt expects to see more dividend increases across all sectors, with few decreases. "We expect to see dividend increases across the board in 2011 as companies continue to demonstrate to investors that they are well into recovery mode. In addition, if the economy continues to improve and home and commercial real estate portfolios don't deteriorate, we could see a second round of dividend increases for Financials late in the year, with the increased payment being made in the first quarter of 2012."

To download Standard & Poor's Dividend Record, please visit the following web address: www.marketattributes.standardandpoors.com and click on "Dividends". For more information about S&P Indices, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

About S&P Indices

S&P Indices, the world's leading index provider, maintains a wide variety of investable and benchmark indices to meet an array of investor needs. Over $1.25 trillion is directly indexed to Standard & Poor's family of indices, which includes the S&P 500, the world's most followed stock market index, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, the S&P Global BMI, an index with approximately 11,000 constituents, the S&P GSCI, the industry's most closely watched commodities index, and the S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Bond Index, the premier investable index for U.S. municipal bonds. For more information, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices.

SOURCE Standard & Poor's