Published on 24 Feb 2024 on Simply Wall St. via Yahoo Finance
Should Income Investors Look At Santos Limited (ASX:STO) Before Its Ex-Dividend?
Santos Limited (ASX:STO) stock is about to trade ex-dividend in two days. The ex-dividend date is one business day before a company's record date, which is the date on which the company determines which shareholders are entitled to receive a dividend. The ex-dividend date is important because any transaction on a stock needs to have been settled before the record date in order to be eligible for a dividend. Accordingly, Santos investors that purchase the stock on or after the 26th of February will not receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 27th of March.
The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.175 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$0.26 to shareholders. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that Santos has a trailing yield of 5.4% on the current share price of AU$7.42. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Santos's dividend is reliable and sustainable. So we need to check whether the dividend payments are covered, and if earnings are growing.
View our latest analysis for Santos