Regarding dividends investment theme play , may I know which aspects should we pay more attention; dividend yield or how consistent is the dividend payout ?

Hi Kelvin, apologies for the late response. Too many questions and couldn't get to all of them in time. It's important to look at both. The consistency of dividend allows you to gauge the stability of returns and how the cash flow is defensible. The absolute yield is just a function of dividend per share divided by the share price. If the company is able to continue to grow its dividend per share over time then the dividend yield can also remain good even with rising share price (capital appreciation on top of the dividend returns). So good dividend plays in the equities marekt are those that can actually grow their dividends as the company continues to grow. This is a classic divdend growth stock. This is why i am sometimes perplexed by static dividend plays like REITs as when the share price moves there is limited capacity for dividend per share to increase and so yield falls as share price rises and vice versa which is a major risk of a stock that does not grow or has limited capacity to grow. I would only buy static divdends when the yield approaches my target but many REITs are struggling to keep dividends as are many pure static dividend plays who just payout through cashflow.

Hey there!

It'll be rough if a company can announce high dividends at some point and then lower it drastically due to the performance of the company. You may want to compare the dividend yield across time to see how much has deviated. It's a warning sign of the company's performance normally if dividends deviate too much across a period of time.
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