RE: I'm probably the only person who's lost money on this share!31 Oct 2019 10:03
Any dividend has to be paid from retained earnings, otherwise its illegal. The only option on a dividend is when stock/asset has been sold and profit has been booked to retain earnings/profit from current year. The £50m is an asset in the balance sheet which will generate cash but not profit. How they use the cash is different, they could recognise, once the sale is complete, a more substantial dividend - its sll relative to the profit that they expect to generate and what is needed to reinvest for the future. One use of the £50m could be to do a share buyback, this would be legal as it's swapping cash for shares.