In maintaining the UK Dividend Champions List, I’ve chosen to measure dividend growth length based on a company’s Ex-Dividend Date using a Calendar Year basis rather than Financial Year. In this post I look at the difference of Financial vs Calendar Year and its impact on the dividend growth history of some UK companies.
Financial vs Calendar Year
Making this decision simplifies the calculation since it doesn’t require knowledge of each company’s financial year end date. It also puts all companies in the list on the same playing field since there can be some major differences in financial reporting timeframes.
On the other hand, it can result in some discrepancies especially when a company announces publically that they’ve “increased dividends for xx number of years”. Such announcements are invariably based on Financial Year results and only match the Calendar Year calculations if the Financial Year ends in December and if the financial year date hasn’t changed for all of that period.
Here’s one example where the Calendar Year basis gives a shorter history so you can see what I mean.
GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK)
| Ex-Dividend Date | Amount (GBX) | Financial Year |
| 18-Feb 2004 | 14 | 2003 (Q4) |
| 12-May 2004 | 10 | 2004 (Q1) |
| 4-Aug 2004 | 10 | 2004 (Q2) |
| 3-Nov 2004 | 10 | 2004 (Q3) |
| 16-Feb 2005 | 12 | 2004 (Q4) |
| 1-May 2005 | 10 | 2005 (Q1) |
| 3 Aug 2005 | 10 | 2005 (Q2) |
| 2-Nov 2005 | 10 | 2005 (Q3) |
| 15-Feb 2006 | 14 | 2005 (Q4) |
On a Calendar Year basis, GSK paid £0.44 in 2004 and £0.42 in 2005. This reduction in dividends shortened its dividend growth record by my calculations and I show it as a 9-Year Dividend Challenger. However on a Financial Year basis, the dividends continued to increase (£0.42 in FY2004 and £0.44 in FY2005) and it has a much longer growth history on a FY basis (24 years).
Of course this works both ways and companies such as Burberry plc (BRBY) have a longer CY dividend growth history than their FY record shows (13 years vs. 5 years). So it’s swings and roundabouts really.
Anyway, now that my database is up and running (though needing a lot more data entered), I can calculate the length both ways. Here’s a list of the companies that I’ve tracked so far on a Financial Year basis along with their Calendar Year equivalent.
Please note that this list contains companies that aren’t in the UK Dividend Champions List since their CY dividend history is too short (< 4 years).
UK Dividend Growth History by Calendar Year
If there’s any interest in this Financial Year view, I’m willing to include it as a standalone sheet in the List for reference since there’s no extra work to export it out now.
| Symbol | Company | FY | CY | Index |
| DGE | Diageo plc | 26 | 26 | FTSE-100 |
| DNO | Domino Printing Sciences plc | 26 | 25 | FTSE-250 |
| PZC | PZ Cussons plc | 26 | 26 | FTSE-250 |
| SXS | Spectris Group plc | 26 | 25 | FTSE-250 |
| VOD | Vodafone Group plc | 26 | 20 | FTSE-100 |
| WEIR | Weir Group plc | 26 | 25 | FTSE-100 |
| GSK | GlaxoSmithKline plc | 24 | 9 | FTSE-100 |
| COB | Cobham plc | 23 | 28 | FTSE-250 |
| RPS | RPS Group plc | 23 | 13 | FTSE-250 |
| BNZL | Bunzl plc | 22 | 21 | FTSE-100 |
| FSJ | James Fisher and Sons plc | 21 | 20 | FTSE-250 |
| RPC | RPC Group plc | 21 | 22 | FTSE-250 |
| SRP | Serco Group plc | 21 | 0 | FTSE-250 |
| SMJ | J. Smart & Co. plc | 20 | 20 | FTSE-FL |
| DWHT | Dewhurst plc | 19 | 18 | None |
| IRV | Interserve plc | 19 | 18 | FTSE-250 |
| YNGA | Young & Co’s Brewery plc | 19 | 25 | AIM-100 |
| AMFW | AMEC Foster Wheeler plc | 18 | 18 | FTSE-250 |
| HCFT | Highcroft Investments plc | 18 | 18 | FTSE-FL |
| ULE | Ultra Electronics Holdings plc | 17 | 18 | FTSE-250 |
| BNKR | The Bankers Investment Trust plc | 16 | 15 | FTSE-250 |
| CRDA | Croda International plc | 16 | 22 | FTSE-250 |
| ABF | Associated British Foods plc | 15 | 9 | FTSE-100 |
| SSE | SSE plc | 14 | 14 | FTSE-100 |
| GNS | Genus plc | 13 | 13 | FTSE-250 |
| ROR | Rotork plc | 13 | 25 | FTSE-250 |
| SYR | Synergy Health plc | 13 | 0 | FTSE-250 |
| LTC | Latchways plc | 12 | 12 | None |
| TRG | TR European Growth Trust PLC | 12 | 12 | FTSE-A/S |
| DPH | Dechra Pharmaceuticals plc | 11 | 11 | FTSE-250 |
| FOUR | 4Imprint plc | 11 | 5 | FTSE-A/S |
| SKY | Sky plc | 11 | 11 | FTSE-100 |
| TET | Treatt plc | 11 | 10 | FTSE-FL |
| CSN | Chesnara plc | 10 | 11 | FTSE-A/S |
| JD. | JD Sports Fashion plc | 10 | 10 | FTSE-250 |
| SHP | Shire Pharmaceuticals Group plc | 10 | 11 | FTSE-100 |
| ABC | Abcam plc | 9 | 9 | AIM-100 |
| ADN | Aberdeen Asset Management plc | 9 | 9 | FTSE-100 |
| EDIN | Edinburgh Investment Trust plc | 9 | 3 | FTSE-250 |
| IDH | Immunodiagnostic Systems plc | 9 | 9 | AIM-100 |
| IGG | IG Group Holdings plc | 9 | 9 | FTSE-250 |
| ABD | Aberdeen New Dawn Investment Trust plc | 8 | 8 | FTSE-A/S |
| CTH | CareTech Holdings plc | 8 | 7 | AIM-A/S |
| 3IN | 3i Infrastructure plc | 7 | 0 | FTSE-250 |
| AAIF | Aberdeen Asian Income Fund Limited | 6 | 0 | FTSE-A/S |
| ANCR | Animalcare Group plc | 6 | 6 | AIM-A/S |
| ANP | Anpario plc | 6 | 6 | AIM-A/S |
| APH | Alliance Pharma plc | 5 | 6 | AIM-A/S |
| BRBY | Burberry Group plc | 5 | 13 | FTSE-100 |
| DJAN | Daejan Holdings plc | 5 | 5 | FTSE-250 |
| AMS | Advanced Medical Solutions Group plc | 4 | 2 | AIM-100 |
| EAH | ECO Animal Health Group plc | 4 | 4 | AIM-A/S |
| GNK | Greene King plc | 4 | 5 | FTSE-250 |
| WPP | WPP plc | 4 | 22 | FTSE-100 |
This is not a complete list either as I’ve only manually reviewed about 87 companies so far. I have another 1,391 stocks to look at! 😉
I’m aware that some of the companies may have longer dividend growth histories than I’ve shown. I use only lengths that I can prove from historical reports or accounts – generally most records stop around 1997 for UK companies with some limited data available from 1990 onwards. This tends to limit the maximum history to about 26 years.
The above list also uses my latest data so it includes updates that are not yet included in the March version of the UK Dividend Champions List (e.g. DGE’s increased dividend growth history). I figured you deserve some small reward for reading to the end of this post!
Quote of the day
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
Keep it simple/I agree with your change.
Hi DFG,
Thanks – I like simple! 🙂
Best wishes,
-DL
This is such a fantastic resource, can’t appreciate you enough. I think it’s really helpful to have both types of year calculations.
Cheers
Hi M,
OK I’ll include the FY info in the next update as a flat list in its own separate sheet.
I appreciate the kind words – thank you! 🙂
Cheers,
-DL
DL,
For my own list I use the calendar year too instead of the financial or fiscal years. Many European companies have different ways of doing things, so it would become a mess quickly. Keeping track of the year a dividend was actually paid makes things much simpler and easier to maintain.
If it’s not much extra work, I’d report both the financial and calendar year!
Thank you for maintaining the UK list – it’s an invaluable resource to many of us.
Best wishes,
NMW
Hi NMW,
Hmm…do you base your list on the ex-dividend date or the payment date? I use the ex-dividend date as it’s more readily available.
I’ve found a lot of mistakes between Yahoo, Google and other major sources of UK dividend data so I’ve been researching companies manually of late to verify it all. Between duplicate dividend entries, wrong currency conversion, missed stock-splits and even confusion between pounds and pence, it’s amazing how bad the online data can be.
I add the FY information when I manually check a company so I only have it for the stocks I’ve checked so far but I’ll include what I have in the generated report next month.
Thanks for your support!
Best wishes,
-DL
DL,
That’s a really good question. I always use the payment date, but there’s hardly ever any difference when a calendar year is concerned between the ex-dividend and payment date since many European companies only pay a dividend once every year between March and June.
The data online is horrendous! I never thought making and keeping a list like ours would be so much work. Even the information on many corporate websites is atrocious. Stock splits, mergers, and demergers are the worst.
Cheers,
NMW