ITV - The interim dividend Part 12 Aug 2021 12:52
After the excellent numbers last week and with ITV talking about returning to their dividend policy at the end of this financial year, it was slightly perplexing that with £703m cash in the bank and a further £779m of undrawn facilities at the company's disposal, that an interim dividend wasn't declared by the board and as a few of you on here pointed out last week.
I've looked into this in a bit more detail over the weekend as I too wasn't convinced with the narrative delivered by the board, since when have they taken into account shareholders' interests ??
Okay, lets start by looking into the interims of 2017, 2018 and 2019 ignoring last year for obvious reasons and highlighting the interim dividends paid but also the Net Debt figures for those respective years as published by the company :-
2017 - 2.52p paid Net Debt £1,074m
2018 - 2.60p paid Net Debt £1,034m
2019 - 2.60p paid Net Debt £1,082m
So with 4,025,000,000 ITV shares in issue that is total interim dividend payments for the years of 2017, 2018 and 2019 of £101.4m, £104.6m and £104.6m respectively paid out by the company.
And if we take a look at the end of year cash balances for the same years :-
2017 - £126m
2018 -£ 95m
2019 - £246m
And here at the 2021 interim stage, ITV have a cash balance of £703m, £779m of undrawn facilities as mentioned and continued profit/cash conversion of 80-85% heading into the next few years.
So why no interim dividend, its seems rather strange ?? Well I think I may just have the answer !
We don't need to look too far back, just say to 2019. Up til then and with dividends still being paid in the interims and final figures (including special dividends in some years), the ITV shareholder register was largely comprised of blue chip companies, institutions and retail investors.
I have searched around the internet this weekend and tried to obtain a current and full shareholder register as of say end of July 31st 2021 but to no avail.
The most comprehensive shareholder list I can find that is up to date and I have mentioned it on here previously if you haven't seen it already, is this this one :-
https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xlon/itv/ownership
Now if you click on the tabs, 'Major' and 'institutions' you will observe the total percentage of ITV shares held, 34.41%. Now this is without the Liberty holding of 9.9%, so we can presume that around 44% of ITV shares are held with institutions etc. If we add the Liberty stake. Say add another 5% for margin of error that gives us 49% of the total amount of outstanding shares in ITV.
That leaves us with 51% of ITV shares still unaccounted for !
Now I mentioned this last Summer and asked anyone if they had seen these shares but no-one came back to me, surprise, surprise.
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