Company dividends are given by the companies to their shareholders against the shares that they purchase. When a company earns profit it pays out certain amount of the profit as dividends to the shareholders. The companies also retain a part of the profit in order to re-invest in the business.
The various companies of the world follow different types of dividend structure. The dividends to be paid by the companies may be declared quarterly, bi-annually or annually. In some companies, the board of directors put the proposal of the payment of dividends in the annual meeting and then over the voting decide on whether to pay the dividend or not. The mode of payment of the company dividends also may vary from one company to another. The companies may either pay the dividends in the forms of checks, stocks, property or in some other forms. It entirely depends on the company policy as on which mode to pay the dividends. The dividend per share to be given by the company depends on the amount of profit earned by the company in that fiscal year.
According to the dividend history of JP Morgan Chase, the company issued dividends of $1.0600 in 1999, $0.9133 in 2000, $1.3400 in 2001, $1.3600 in 2002, $1.3600 in 2003, $1.3600 in 2004, $1.3600 in 2005, $1.3600 in 2006 and $1.0600 in 2007.
GE pays dividend quarterly and for over one hundred years, the company has the record to pay dividends on each quarter. The dividends of GE have been increased for last consecutive 31 years. The dividend amount per share that paid out by GE is the actual amount to be paid per share.
The Mellon Investor Services manages the direct stock purchase and the dividend re-investment program for the Microsoft. The Microsoft pays a quarterly dividend of $0.10 per share. The Microsoft started to pay quarterly dividends from the year 2005 earlier to which used to pay annual dividend per share to its shareholders.
In a recent declaration made by the Intel Corporation's board of directors, it has been confirmed that the company is about to pay a quarterly dividend of 11.25 cents per share on the common stock of the company.