The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) dividend for FY23 has been announced this morning. In this article, I'll run through some of the important numbers as CBA shares its profit with shareholders.
With the largest of the ASX bank shares, the dividend usually makes up a substantial amount of the shareholder return each year.
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CBA dividend for FY23 revealed
The bank's board has decided the FY23 annual dividend payment will be a total of $4.50 per share. That represents an increase of 17% compared to the 2022 financial year.
With shareholders already receiving the FY23 interim dividend, it was the FY23 final dividend of $2.40 per share that was revealed today. This payment is 14% higher than the FY22 final dividend. The bank said it was driven by "strong earnings and reduction in share count" from share buybacks.
For FY23, the cash earnings per share (EPS) increased by 8% to $6.01.
CBA said that its full-year dividend payout ratio was 74%, which was near the middle of the target range.
It said it's going to continue to target a full-year dividend payout ratio of 70% to 80% of cash net profit.
When will it be paid?
CBA shares will go ex-dividend on 16 August 2023, which is only a week away at the time of writing.
That means investors only have until 15 August 2023 to buy CBA shares if they're interested in receiving the dividend.
The payment date of the $2.40 per share final CBA dividend of FY23 will be 28 September 2023, so less than two months away.
What is the CBA dividend yield?
Taking into account the early movement on the CBA share price, the FY23 full-year dividend of $4.50 per share represents a grossed-up dividend yield of 6.1%.
Profit criticised
While investors are currently cheering the result, with CBA shares up 2%, the huge profit has been attacked by Finance Sector Union (FSU) national secretary Julia Angrisano who said the bank's bigger profits could be funding better pay rises for its workers.
The Australian reported that Angrisano said:
Very obviously, the CBA can afford to pay more. Their proposed pay rise would be a pay cut in real terms, given inflation. The finance industry would expect the CBA to provide industry leading wage increases given their industry leading profits.
They are abandoning communities and Australian jobs in the interest of profit. Retail branch staff continue to turn up to work without sufficient resourcing whilst experiencing the threat of future branch closures whilst back-office workers continue to lose colleagues to offshoring.
CBA's record profit demonstrates that staff can continue to work productively while maintaining their current work-from-home arrangements. The return to office mandate is clearly not necessary and we are therefore disappointed that CBA has chosen not to address these significant concerns during the Fair Work proceedings.
The FSU recently lodged a dispute at the Fair Work Commission over bank demands that workers must come into the office at least 50% of the time.
