(BFM Bourse) – Thanks to their LVMH shares, the CEO of the luxury group and his family have garnered several billion euros in dividends in recent years.
With the surge in LVMH’s results, the dividends received by its largest shareholders logically reach substantial amounts. Including the first: Bernard Arnault and his family. As reported The chained Duck in its February 1 edition, the richest man in the world, his family and their “holdings” would have received around 1 billion euros in dividends in 2019.
Contacted by BFM Bourse, spokespersons for the LVMH group did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But BFM Bourse took out its calculator and found data similar to that of the weekly newspaper.
In LVMH’s universal registration document dating from 2019, the company specified that at the end of December of that same year, the family group (the Arnault family and the companies it controls, i.e. Christian Dior SE) owned directly and indirectly 47.35% of the capital, or 239.3 million shares.
For 2019, the company paid a gross dividend per share of 4.8 euros, which would correspond, on paper – and assuming a homogeneous number of LVMH shares held by the family group during the payments – to an amount theoretical amount of approximately 1.15 billion euros.
A sharp increase in the dividend in 2021 and 2022
A large part of this sum was paid in 2020. In 2019, LVMH actually paid the balance of the dividend for the 2018 financial year, of 4 euros per share, as well as an interim payment on the results of the financial year. 2019, i.e. 2.2 euros per share. By again taking the number of shares held by the family group, the amount actually paid in the course of the calendar year 2019 would be closer, on paper, to 1.48 billion euros…
Recall that LVMH had slashed its dividend paid for 2019, due to the health crisis, finally retaining an overall coupon of 4.8 euros per share after 6 euros for 2018.
The dividend per share was then raised to 6 euros for 2020, 10 euros for 2021 and the group, when publishing its annual results in February, proposed to raise it to 12 euros for the 2022 financial year.
A dividend does not enrich the shareholder
In 2021, LVMH indicated in its universal registration document that the Arnault family held directly and indirectly at the end of 2021 just over 241.4 million shares. Assuming once again a homogeneous number of shares during the payments, a simple calculation leads to a theoretical amount of around 2.4 billion euros in dividends for the 2021 financial year.
For 2022, assuming that the number of shares held for the family group is the same as that indicated in the group’s half-year report (242.25 million according to the document), and that the proposed dividend is adopted at the general meeting, the The Arnault family group would theoretically receive around 2.9 billion euros in dividends for this financial year.
Remember that a dividend is not a “gift” to shareholders but a fraction of the wealth that a company decides to pay directly to its holders. Its payment is in theory neutral for the shareholder, because the dividend is detached from the share price (whose price falls mechanically by the same amount at that time). In other words, he recovers in one pocket what he loses in the other.
Julien Marion – ©2023 BFM Bourse
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