Medtronic (MDT) boosts its quarterly cash dividend by 7% to $0.26 per share. The company's...

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Kilborn Comments (11)
 
I'm a noob at dividends, so this might be a flaky question. How can you have 35 years of increases and still be only at .26 per share? Did they give dividends only annually long ago?
21 Jun 2012, 05:26 PM Reply Like

gostockyourself Comments (100)
 
good catch thats actually pretty funny and im curious myself
21 Jun 2012, 05:41 PM Reply Like

jeanewight Comments (249)
 
I go to Yahoo Finance and to a stock I want to look up; and to the left, under "Historical Prices," you can click on to see prices and/or dividends. If I recall corrrectly, you can view the stock price either per month or year by year, and you can choose to get a complete history of the dividends paid out, too. And, yeah, some of them increase in very small increments (like I have seen $.17 then $.175) while some stay the same for varying periods of time or increase, then decrease. This may or may not answer Kilborn's question.
21 Jun 2012, 09:54 PM Reply Like

Kilborn Comments (11)
 
Thanks! That 26 cent dividend is quarterly, so maybe they had just annual dividends a long time ago, and split them into quarters later. Still interesting...
21 Jun 2012, 10:20 PM Reply Like

jeanewight Comments (249)
 
Just for the heck of it, I checked MDT's div. history; YF shows the first dividend was paid out in Jan. 1982 and was .00219; stayed the same the next quarter; then increased to .0025 in July 1982. LOL
21 Jun 2012, 10:32 PM Reply Like

football frank Comments (93)
 
The reason It's 26 cents a quarter is the stock has split over the years, and when It splits, the dividend splits also. The stock has split six times since 1989, so the "real" price of the shares, If you factor in the splits is around $2400 a share.. So one share purchased in 1986
cost $38. That one share has grown to 64 shares, X $38
22 Jun 2012, 12:16 AM Reply Like

Kilborn Comments (11)
 
Good info jean and frank. Probably should use teh google before asking such a rookie question...
22 Jun 2012, 09:24 AM Reply Like