Myer Holdings Ltd (ASX: MYR) shares have been known for a lot of things over the past few years. But paying dividends hasn't been one of them. This famous Australian retailer has been infamously struggling in recent years. Most of us would know the threats that a changing retail landscape has confronted department stores like Myer with. Back in 2010, Myer was a $3.71 share. Today, it's currently going for 50 cents, down 0.98% so far this Friday. The Myer share price is also down by more than 55% over the past 5 years.
But Myer is now up an eye-catching 20.24% over the past 5 trading days. This dramatic jump upwards was sparked by the company's release of its half-year earnings results yesterday morning.
As we covered at the time, Myer reported total sales growth of 8.5% to $1.52 billion, along with a 55.2% increase in net profits after tax to $32.3 million.
Myer shares break a dividend drought
But perhaps the biggest piece of news was the resumption of dividend payments. Myer shareholders haven't received a dividend since the 2017 financial year. But that is about to change. Myer told investors that an interim dividend of 1.5 cents per share, fully franked, would be coming their way soon.
That's not quite as much as Myer's last dividend of 2 cents per share that investors received back on 9 November 2017. Or the 2017 interim dividend of 3 cents per share before that. But it's certainly better than what investors have received ever since.
Myer shares will trade ex-dividend for this payment on 23 March, with the cash arriving in shareholders' pockets on 12 May.
At the current Myer share price of 50 cents, this dividend will be worth a yield of 3% (or 4.29% grossed-up with the full franking). If Myer repeats this dividend for its final results later in the year (which is just hypothetical at this point), it would give Myer a forward dividend yield of 6% on today's pricing.
So it's perhaps no wonder that investors got so excited on this news yesterday.
At the current Myer share price, this ASX retailer has a market capitalisation of $418.85 million.
