The IGO Ltd (ASX: IGO) share price has dipped into the red in afternoon trade on Tuesday.
Shares in the minerals mining company are now exchanging hands at $9.72 apiece, a slight 0.3% dip out of the money.
For context, the S&P/ASX 200 index (ASX: XJO) is also down 0.3% on the day.
Let's investigate further.
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What's up with the IGO share price today?
The IGO share price has climbed over 10% since the company announced its Kwinana lithium hydroxide refinery produced its first chemical product on 23 August.
It might come as a surprise therefore why IGO shares are on the way down today in the absence of any market sensitive information.
However, one important consideration as to why the company's share price has taken a dip today, is that IGO shares are going 'ex-dividend' today.
The ex-dividend date serves as an important date to remember as investors who buy a company's shares after the stipulated time will not be eligible to receive the subsequent dividend payment into their bank accounts.
What's more, is that in most cases, a company's share price will drop by roughly the same amount as its upcoming dividend payment on the ex-dividend date.
This is because the ex-dividend date is the day on which a company's shares theoretically begin to trade without the value of its dividend payment baked into the share price.
Logically, we can expect the IGO share price to dip by roughly the same amount as its dividend on this basis.
For instance, the company declared a final and FY21 total dividend of 10 cents per share in its FY21 earnings report.
Since the close on Monday, IGO shares have trended down, and have given up roughly 8 cents per share to the time of writing, in line with the total dividend the company declared.
Therefore, a dip in the IGO share price was to be expected, given the company went ex-dividend from today.
IGO share price snapshot
The IGO share price has gained 52% this year to date, extending the gain over the past 12 months to 120%. Despite these gains, IGO shares have slipped into the red over the last month.
Regardless, both of the longer term results have outpaced the broad index's return of around 25% over the past year.
