Archived, and again with satisfaction, a dividend season in which shareholders have returned to remunerate regularly after the parenthesis linked to the pandemic, in Piazza Affari it is already time to look to the future. And the forecasts for the coupons that will be paid in 2022 seem rather rosy, with a further increase of almost 20% compared to an amount that already in the current year has returned to exceed 20 billion euros also thanks to the recovery of payments not previously made by virtue of the release of the regulatory authorities vis-à-vis banks and insurance companies.
The prices of derivatives
The indication of sure comfort comes from Intermonte, which bases its analysis on the prices of derivatives normally used by the operating desks, whose values are considered particularly reliable because they are continuously updated based on the expectations of the operators. For the year that is about to begin, a dividend detachment is expected for the Milan Stock Exchange equivalent to 1,035 points of the Ftse Mib index: figure corresponding to a coupon yield (dividend yield) of 3.75%, which is over half a percentage point higher than the 3.17% paid in 2021 and that exceeds the average of the last 10 years, in turn stops at 3.44 per cent.
Estimates (and caution)
Observing the traditional consensus indications collected by financial information providers, the coupon balance could even be richer, at least for the following years. In fact, these data come to predict a increase of up to 35% for 2024, which must however be taken with some caution. “The forecasters are partly underestimating the still high uncertainty about the return to normal post-Covid, even more so if we take into account the arrival of the new variant of the virus” he says Dario Cricket, co-general manager and responsible for the markets area of Intermonte Sim.
To all this, however, there is also another aspect, probably even more relevant: “There is a tendency among analysts to consider the particularly generous level of dividends paid in recent months as structural, not as a one-time event linked to the recovery of coupon payments not made in the previous year and postponed to the current one, “warns Grillo.
The idea, therefore, is that the consensus estimates are in some world “normalizing” the level of payments seen in recent months which in reality will be difficult to repeat, at least in the immediate future, thus paving the way for possible negative surprises. “This – reassures Grillo in any case – does not mean that there will necessarily be a significant revaluation of the shares when lower than expected figures are announced to the market: a correction contained in the stock market is possible, but the effect could be balanced at the moment. which will also be published quarterly accounts with growing profits and all things considered I don’t see the risk of an extended shock».