TV group owner Belo Corporation announced Wednesday morning (4/27) that it would resume payment of a quarterly cash dividend to shareholders. Belo had suspended dividend payments in 2009 to preserve cash during the recession.
The new dividend is a bit smaller: five cents per share, rather than the seven and a half cents last paid on June 5, 2009. The cash dividend of five cents per share for Q3 will be paid September 2, 2011, to shareholders of record on August 12.
Belo’s stock jumped about 3% from the opening bell on Wednesday, but ended the sessi on barely higher than the previous close. In addition to resuming its dividend, Belo announced that Q1 revenues were down 1.9%.
RBR-TVBR observation: Once again Wells Fargo Securities analyst Marci Ryvicker gets a round of applause for predicting that Belo would resume its dividend. In fact, it came a bit sooner than she had predicted a little over a month ago. Her high-yield bond colleague Bishop Cheen had also suggested that Belo was a candidate to resume dividend payments.
