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Daryl Crawford wanted to
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what is ex-dividend day?    when is ex-dividend day?

(NOTE: Normally this type of information would have been placed within the INFORMATION page of the site, but it might be better suited here since the news and stock information are located on this page.)

Both questions are asked constantly. People are either wanting to know the date, or they are wanting an explanation of the entire dividend system.

WHEN IS EX-DIVIDEND DAY?

People that want to find out the current dividend dates can find them at the Atria web site. When you reach the site, look for the link called INVESTORS. Click on the link.

Once there, look for the link called STOCK AND DIVIDEND INFORMATION. Click on the link.

On this page, Altria has furnished all of the dates.

WHAT IS EX-DIVIDEND DAY?

Here's the short explanation of the system.

 A person may see an announcement concerning Altria dividends, but they do not understand the meanings of the three different dates. For example, let's take an actual news announcement from the past and break down the date information (Actual Altria dividend price is higher that is used in this example).

=======================================
The Board of Directors of Altria Group, Inc. today declared a regular quarterly dividend of $0.73 per common share, payable on January 10, 2005, to stockholders of record as of December 27, 2004. The ex-dividend date is December 22, 2004.
=======================================

There are three dates that seem to concern people that want dividend payments. Those three date are: The Ex-Dividend Date, The Date-of-Record, and The Payable Date.

For Altria, there is a three day gap between the ex-dividend date and the date of record. (Other companies may have other rules.)  If you buy or sell Altria stock on a certain day, you will not actually own it for three days, primarily because it takes that long to finalize the sale and update all of the records, for some reason.

So, if you sell Altria stock on ex-dividend date, you should get the dividend . As far as the company is concerned, you owned the stock for another three days. However, if you buy the stock on ex-dividend date, you may not get the dividend because the company thinks the old owner still owns the stock.

NOTE: You may have noticed that in the example above it shows a five day difference. That's because everything pretty much surrounds business days and the weekends do not count.

The official announcement for all three dates (The Ex-Dividend Date, The Date-of-Record, and The Payable Date) usually occurs anywhere from a month before the actual ex-dividend date to just a few weeks before the actual ex-dividend date.

Ex-dividend dates occur four times a year, and are normally somewhere in the middle of the month of March, June, September, and December.

For Altria, the payable date is usually a month after the ex-dividend date -- checks that are typically sent in January, April, July, and October.