Each results season, in the slow-plodding park run that is the London Stock Exchange, several stocks will fall off the pace and axe their dividend. So far in 2024, we’ve seen PZ Cussons (PZC), Close Brothers (CBG), Travis Perkins (TPK), St James’s Place (STJ), Vodafone (VOD) and Diversified Energy (DEC) hit the wall, and either reduce or abandon their cash distributions to shareholders.
That’s just in the FTSE 350, and excludes mining giants such as Glencore (GLEN), Anglo American (AAL) and Fresnillo (FRES), which have all responded to lacklustre commodity prices or operational issues by leaning on the flexibility in their payout policies.
Some corporates, yet to forget the wounds of recent cyclical downturns, have adjusted shareholder largesse to anticipate off years, or adapt to fast-changing capital priorities.