The cash dividends paid by the listed companies in the securities market for the fiscal year ending December last year amounted to 45.5 trillion won, setting a record high.
According to the Korea Listed Companies Association on the 12th, the total cash dividends (settlement of account and interim dividends, preferred shares included) for last year reached 45.5 trillion won. This figure represents a 10.6% increase compared to 2023, with 564 companies, or 70.2% of the 804 listed companies, participating in the dividends. Over the past three years, the scale of dividends has steadily increased from 39.8 trillion won in 2022 and 41.15 trillion won in 2023.
Among all dividend companies, 455 listed companies (80.7%) have paid dividends continuously for over five years, while 531 companies (94.2%) have paid dividends for over two years. The cash dividends from companies that have paid dividends for over five years reached 41.2 trillion won, accounting for 90.4% of the total cash dividends. The average dividend per company was 90.49 billion won, which is 12.1% (9.7 billion won) higher than the overall average of 8.07 billion won, and the dividend payout ratio was 35.7%, exceeding the overall payout ratio of 34.7% by 1 percentage point (p).
The number of companies that implemented interim dividends and the scale of dividends are also on the rise. The number of companies paying interim dividends increased steadily from 64 companies in 2022 and 72 companies in 2023 to 84 companies in 2024. The amount of interim dividends has also been increasing annually, reaching 15.5 trillion won last year, following 12.7 trillion won in 2022 and 13.7 trillion won in 2023.
The number of companies that set the dividend record date outside of the fiscal year-end date has totaled 218 companies, a 2.66-fold increase from the previous year (82 companies). The total cash dividends amounted to 27.8 trillion won, an increase of 15.9 trillion won compared to the previous year. The improvement of the dividend record date system, implemented for the first time in 2023, aims to enhance investors' predictability by determining the dividends and their scale in advance, leading to an increase in participating listed companies.
Last year, 100 corporations disclosed their plans to enhance corporate value and paid dividends amounting to 25.5 trillion won. This total is 5.5 trillion won higher than the 20 trillion won paid by 464 companies that did not disclose. The average cash dividend per company was 255.4 billion won, which is 5.9 times more than the non-disclosing companies' average of 43.1 billion won.
The higher the market capitalization, the higher the dividend payout ratio appeared to be. Last year, 93 companies had a payout ratio exceeding 50%, with 67.7% of them being companies with market capitalizations of over 250 billion won. It was revealed that large listed companies with assets exceeding 2 trillion won accounted for 75.8% of the total dividend amount, driving the scale of dividends.