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The CEWS payments, she said, were exclusively used by Mullen, which received $10.3 million in subsidies during the third quarter and paid out nearly $9 million in dividends, to bring back employees who had been laid off, provide additional sick days and to create new jobs, she said.
“The actions taken above in respect of our dividend, the NCIB and CEWS were done to preserve the overall viability of Mullen Group, and our business units which collectively employ over 6,000 Canadians,” Scott said. “Had we not undertaken these measures, it was possible that Mullen Group, and our business units, would not have been around or able to weather the pandemic.”
Mullen and several other companies also pointed to the importance of their dividend and how sustaining it has been important from an investment perspective.
With the exception of Constellation Software, few names on the Post’s list are growth stocks. Much like with Canada’s big banks, the reason why investors are attracted to most of these names is they know they’ll be consistently generating income.
Newhaven Asset Management Inc. president Ryan Bushell, who invests solely in dividend stocks for his clients, said some investors see a cut or a suspension to a dividend as a black mark. They’ll drop a stock and never look back.
A cut or suspension almost always comes in line with a deep selloff for the stock as well, Bushell said. There are entire indexes built on the length of time that companies have gone without cutting dividends, he said, and so a cut or suspension can result in a substantial loss of institutional funds, putting the average shareholder at risk of receiving a double gut punch.
