Cigna will pay $1 a share on March 25.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
After a flurry of activity in December, the first week of 2021 was pretty light for dividend announcements from large companies.
But at least two firms declared dividend increases.
One was Jefferies Financial Group (ticker: JEF), which plans to boost its quarterly disbursement to 20 cents from 15 cents. That’s a 33% hike.
The stock, which recently yielded around 3%, has a one-year return of 29%, dividends included.
Health insurer Cigna (CI) declared its first quarterly dividend. It will pay $1 a share on March 25 to shareholders of record as of the close of trading on March 10.
The company had been declaring a dividend once a year, most recently last March at 4 cents a share. So Cigna investors are in store for a big dividend increase.
The stock has a one-year return of about 5%. Factoring in the higher dividend and annualizing it, the stock would yield about 1.8%.
Several other companies said they plan to keep their quarterly disbursements at current levels. CVS Health (CVS) declared a quarterly dividend of 50 cents a share. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) plans to continue paying a quarterly disbursement of $1.01 a share.
Write to Lawrence C. Strauss at [email protected]
