Weak pound adds £6bn to UK company dividends
"Dollar payouts to shareholders worth more to investors as sterling slides"
Investors in UK companies can expect to receive an additional £5.7bn of dividends this year because of the pound’s slide against the US dollar.
The extra cash underlines how a weaker UK currency benefits many British companies that earn a large share of their income abroad, as well as sterling-based investors whose portfolios have international exposure.
Around two-fifths of UK-listed businesses declare their dividends in dollars or euros. Those income streams are now worth much more than they were last year, as the value of sterling has slipped to multi-decade lows.
As a long-time, Sterling denominated, dividend collecting, investor it's been my experience that this beneficial side-effect of a weak domestic currency is often overlooked whenever the GBP endures periods of fragility, as it's prone to do from time to time. Appears to add weight to the maxim "every cloud has a silver lining" - well, at least it seems to do for those of us who over the years have mastered the self-discipline of delayed gratification.