While Best Buy (BBY -0.25%) shoppers were snapping up Black Friday deals, the retailer's investors were digesting some encouraging news about their stock on Wednesday. The company declared its newest quarterly dividend, $0.55 per share, to be paid on Jan. 5 to stockholders of record as of Dec. 15.
Somewhat atypically for the retail industry these days, Best Buy is a regular and reliable dividend payer. It also tends to lift that distribution once every year. Since the beginning of 2015, it has risen from $0.23 to the present level. At the most recent closing stock price, the new dividend translates to a yield just under 2%.
Image source: Best Buy.
By maintaining its payout, Best Buy is signaling to its shareholders that its business is solid. The company has done well in the past few years in the face of the Retail Apocalypse, changing its strategy and the way it operates in order to better compete with aggressive online retailers. It improved and tightened its inventory management and went face-to-face with digital rivals with price-matching guarantees, among other smart moves.
Lately, the company has capitalized in particular on the recent pandemic-induced popularity of goods like home theater components and appliances. It has also seen dramatic improvements in revenue from online sales, an area in which it has devoted significant capital and other resources of late.
While the latest dividend declaration represents an encouraging vote of confidence in Best Buy's underlying business, the company's stock ended the week on a down note. Friday saw Best Buy shares sink by 1.1%, in contrast to the gain of the S&P 500 index.https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BBY?p=BBY&.tsrc=fin-srch
