IBM's Dividend Offers 3.4% Yield

International Business Machines Corp (NYSE: IBM) said that its board has declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $1.40 per common share. On an annualized basis, this worked out to $5.60 a share. The dividend offered 3.40 percent yield, which was higher than the 2.30 percent average yield in the five-year period.IBM said that the dividend would be payable September 10 to its stockholders, whose names appear on its record date of August 10. As a result, it has been paying dividend consecutively since 1916.However, in the last 19 straight years, it has been boosting its dividend. As a result, the average dividend growth in the five-year period was 14.45 percent and that for the three-year period it was 14.84 percent.The latest dividend represented about 40 percent of its profit as dividend. This was higher than the average payout ratio of 31.0 percent in the five-year period.Shares of the company shed 0.47percent on Tuesday at the time of writing this.