Did you say economic crisis, inflation and explosion of poverty? Company shareholders received a record $ 1.560 billion in dividends in 2022. A figure driven by the profits of oil and gas companies, before a promising year 2023, according to a study published on Wednesday. The total amount of dividends paid is up 8.4% compared to 2021, the previous record year thanks to the rebound in global economic activity after the health crisis, according to a report by asset manager Janus Henderson.
Oil and gas producers and financial companies accounted for half of this growth, according to the Global Dividend Index, which lists the 1,200 largest market capitalizations. Due to soaring energy prices which inflated their profits, they “increased their distributions by more than 66%, in the form of ordinary or extraordinary dividends”, specifies the asset manager.
The automobile and luxury “engines” in Europe
The company that paid the most dividends remains, as in 2021, the Anglo-Australian mining company BHP. The 2022 podium is completed by the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras and the American computer giant Microsoft. Next come Apple, China Construction Bank, China Mobile, Rio Tinto, JPMorgan Chase and Johnson & Johnson.
Did the banks continue to benefit from the reauthorization of dividends, after they were frozen by the European Central Bank at the start of the pandemic: they contributed a quarter of the overall increase. The maritime transport sector benefited from the increase in freight, in particular for the Danish Maersk, that of the automobile from the increase in the price of cars and the luxury sector from the continuous increase in demand. These last two sectors are the “engine” of dividend growth in Europe, although “special payments” from French energy companies TotalEnergies and Norwegian Equinor have “also contributed significantly”.
Twelve countries recorded record dividends denominated in dollars, the United States, Canada, Brazil, China, India as well as Taiwan, and several others in their currency, France, Germany, Japan and Australia. While emerging markets grew “by around a fifth”, more traditional markets like the United States saw growth relatively “lower than the rest of the world”. In France, the country which contributed the most to the growth of dividends in Europe with 59.8 billion euros (+4.6%), TotalEnergies and LVMH were the biggest payers of dividends.