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 Viewing dividend information in the Monitor

These instructions will explain how you can view daily dividend information using the Monitor.

Dividends Explained
Dividends are part of a company's net profit which is distributed to their shareholders. They are generally expressed as a number of cents per share. There is no requirement for companies to pay dividends and they may instead choose to reinvest the earnings back into the company.

Companies that pay dividends usually tend to do so at the same time every year. A majority of companies will pay an Interim dividend in the first quarter of their financial year and a final dividend in the last quarter of their financial year. Some companies may also pay a special dividend through the year.

To be paid a dividend you must have purchased shares in the company before the ex dividend date. The share price may fall on this date with the drop being related to the amount of dividend being paid.

The BodhiGold software includes a utility called the Monitor. This utility displays a subset of information that is included in the data downloaded by BodhiGold, each time you click the Catchup button.

The information included relates to events that are applied to your database/s automatically without you even knowing it has occurred. These events include the addition of new symbols; the deletion of expired symbols and the adjustment of historical prices due to share splits, reconstructions and dividends etc.

You can open the Monitor by selecting View>Monitor from BodhiGold's main menu. The Monitor dialog box consists of four (4) sections, these need to be selected in order:

BodhiGold: Dividend Screen in the Monitor

  1. Product & Date » this is where you choose the product you want (i.e. Australian Securities Exchange from the Finance tab) and the day of data you want to view. You make these selections by clicking on the appropriate drop-down box. You first select which Module you require then the Exchange then the Date.

    BodhiGold: Monitor - Product selection

  2. Market » choose the type of Market information you wish to view by clicking on the appropriate tab (i.e. Equity). The tabs displayed here will depend on the choices you made in the Product & Date section.

    BodhiGold: Monitor - Market selection

  3. Information » this is where you choose the information you want displayed in the matrix (table). In this case we want to view the Dividend information so you will need to select the Dividend tab.

    BodhiGold: Monitor - Matrix
    Note: The Dividends tab will only display if there have been dividends passed for the exchange and the date you selected in section 1.

  4. Matrix » This information changes depending on the selections you have made in Sections 1, 2 & 3 on this screen.

    BodhiGold: Monitor - Information selection
    The image above is showing the dividends that were passed for the Equity market from the Australian Stock Exchange on the 28-September-2009.

Dividend Information available in the Monitor

BodhiGold displays the following dividend information through the Monitor:
Code
The unique code allocated to the company by the exchange it is traded on.
Ex Date
This is the ex dividend date which is four business days before the company's Record date. To be entitled to the dividend the shareholder must have purchased shares before this date.
This is also the date when the price may fall due to the dividend value. This results in an adjustment factor being applied to the historical data. You can view this factor by clicking on the Event tab in section 3 of this screen.

BodhiGold: Monitor - Events tab
Note: Other structural and distribution events are listed in this matrix.

Paid Date
The date the dividend is paid.
Kind
Type of Dividend. Generally this is either an interim or final dividend. The last dividend in the company's financial year is classified as final and all others are classified as interim. In some cases there will be a special dividend which is used to indicate that this dividend is not paid regularly each year. Some companies (ie. ASX:GPT) that are choosing to pay 3 or more dividends a year will display 'quarterly' in this field.
Style
The style the dividend is to be paid.
Amount
Amount shareholder can expect to be paid on a per share basis.
If the company is foreign to the exchange then this amount is displayed in the exchanges currency which is converted as at the ex dividend date. In this case actual amounts received may vary from this figure based on exchange rate movements.
Frank
Company tax rate at which the dividend is franked.
If a company has paid a dividend out of profits that it has already paid tax on then the shareholder is entitled to an imputation credit, or a reductuion in the amount of income tax that must be paid - up to the amount of tax already paid by the company.
Detail
Detailed description of the Dividend including the franked price and percentage.

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