ShmoopTube

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finance a la shmoop what is an accumulated dividend okay you know what

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a dividend is companies generally commit to paying it when they have so much [Example of dividend meaning on a 100 dollar bill]

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extra cash profit that they really don't know what to do with the dough yeah nice

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place to be in the case of a preferred stock the dividends aren't just a

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optional-ish they operate more like bond interest only with a catch

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that is dividends on preferred stock can in fact be halted without the company

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being repossessed by the debt holders like in the case where the company falls [Prize wheel lands on hard times]

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on hard times or it wants to preserve its cash to buy a competitor or it just

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wants another jet with a water slide thing on it well yeah it can halt its [Person slides down a jet slide]

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dividend in those cases and well there are two types of preferred stock in this

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realm the ones that pay cumulative dividends and the ones that don't

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cleverly named non-cumulative say a company has halted dividends from its

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preferred for three and a half years and it was paying five bucks a quarter in [Dividend distribution graph]

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dividends from those cumulative preferred well if it was to resume

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paying dividends on them it would first have to pay all back fourteen quarters

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worth of dividends before it began to issue more dividends or pay them to its

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preferred holders that is it owed three years times four quarters or twelve

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quarters plus half a year or two quarters for a total of fourteen

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quarters at five bucks a quarter a share that's five times fourteen or seventy [Formula of non-cumulative dividends]

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dollars a share in back cumulative dividends big obligation but it has to

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pay that amount before it can resume dividend payments why would a company

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have a cumulative feature in its preferred dividend obligation well

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because investors forced it to do so or they wouldn't invest they were worried [Person swipes away stacks of money]

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that the preferred dividends might be just some merrily stopped and then the

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investors would have little or no return on their investment in the preferred and

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this can be a problem for companies that have fallen on hard times they are

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essentially made illiquid in that they can't afford to pay the back dividends [Example of illiquid meaning]

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on the preferreds and they can't raise more capital with this blight on their

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record of having stopped paying a divvy well most [Non cumulative stock stickers appear on a table]

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furred stocks are non-cumulative and if companies decide to just stop paying

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them they can but if they do it's kind of like they've reneged on a handshake [Two guys giving a handshake]

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and you know investors talk so like good luck to the company ever trying to raise

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capital again from the cold cruel outside world yeah welcome to Wall

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Street [Wall Street road sign]

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