Asset manager Janus Henderson estimates that companies will pay shareholders a total of $1.72 trillion over the year.
The amount of dividends paid by companies to their shareholders globally once again broke a record during the first quarter of 2024, marked by the first payments from Meta and Alibaba, according to a report published Thursday, May 23.
The 1,200 listed companies listed in the panel of asset manager Janus Henderson – the largest in terms of market capitalization as of December 31 of the previous year – paid
$339.2 billion to their shareholders in the first three months of 2024
an increase of 2.4% over one year.
Growth was marked in the United States, whose companies account for more than half of dividends ($180 billion), while
in Europe, the amount fell by more than 20%
, at $49.4 billion. The first quarter in Europe is generally slow, with many companies paying their entire dividend for the year during the second quarter.
A sluggish first quarter in Europe
Thus, in France, dividends paid in the first quarter were stable over one year at $3 billion, but only represent a tiny part of the payments over the year ($68.7 billion in 2023).
Meta’s first dividend payments
($1.1 billion during the first quarter) and
Ali Baba
($2.6 billion, 20th largest dividend payer in the world over the period) represent half of global growth over the first three months of the year.
Meta’s payment, however, only represents 20% of the redistribution of its profits to its shareholders via share buybacks.
Disney reinstated its dividend for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic,
“one of the last large companies still recovering from the disruption caused”
also underlines the report.
The ranking is dominated by health (Novartis 1st, Roche 2nd, Novo Nordisk 10th, Astrazeneca 12th, Johnson & Johnson 16th, Abbvie 18th), technology (Microsoft 4th, Apple 8th, Verizon 17th) and even raw materials (BHP 5th , Exxon Mobil 7th, Fortescue 11th, Chevron 15th, Equinor 17th).
“We have reasonable visibility on payouts during the second quarter” and “the overall picture is one of continued resilience, particularly in Europe, the United States and Canada,” says Ben Lofthouse, head of of an equities team at Janus Henderson.
The asset manager left its full-year dividend payout forecast unchanged at
1.720 billion dollars
.
