Declaration of Dividend in Unit Trust Investment Does Not Increase the Overall Value of your Investment Immediately

Many people misunderstood this concept. The worst still is that unit trust consultant or agent who is the one who give wrong information to his/her client.

It is totally agreeable that if a public listed company declared its dividend, those who buy their share will benefit from their distribution but the same concept does not apply to unit trust investment.

For example, if you own a trust trust with current unitholding of 1000 units and current value of RM1 per unit. Then it declare dividend of RM0.10 per unit. So you would get RM100 dividend. After the dividend has been declared, the price of your unit will drop to RM0.90 (RM1.00 – RM0.10) because you have took RM100 of so called dividend.

On top of that, a dividend declaration would subject to company taxation of 25% to 26%.

Let me give you a real life example.

Mr. A has bought CIMB-Principal Equity Fund on 8/2/2010 at price of RM1.2346. After taking account of service charge or 3% of NAV price, the total unit that he got is 14154.97. The illustration as below

Date of Purchase: 8/2/2010
Amount: RM18000
Price before Service Charge: 1.2346
Price after Service Charge of 3%: 1.271638
Total Unitholding: 14,154.97

The fund declared its dividend of gross 6.5 cents per units on 4/6/2010

After deducting the Malaysia taxation, the nett dividend of the fund is 5.64162 cents per units.

That mean, Mr. A get a dividend of RM798.57 and it was reinvested at price of RM1.2487. Thereby the unit that Mr. A gets is 639.52 units (RM798.57 ÷ 1.2487).

Below list down the unitholding and NAV before and after the dividend declaration:

Before Dividend
Unitholding: 14,154.97
NAV Price: RM1.3051
Total Value: RM18,473.65

After Dividend
Unitholding: 14,794.49
NAV Price: RM1.2487
Total Value: RM18473.65


Let me explain it in a layman term using the example of a cake:

A cake weight 10kg worth RM1000.00. That’s mean 1kg is RM100.
If I sell off a kg of the cake, the remaining cake now worth RM900.00.
If I would like to cut it into 10 pieces again, each piece only worth RM90.

The unit trust price of the fund is extracted from the link http://www.cimb-principal.com.my/daily_unittrust_convensional.aspx?ddlID=1169e0d4-3cbf-450e-aa1d-b8edcb4413d6&catID=1169e0d4-3cbf-450e-aa1d-b8edcb4413d6


Disclamer:
The information contained herein has been derived from sources believed to be reliable. No representation is given on and no liability or responsibility is assumed for the accuracy or completeness of this document. This document is provided for information purpose only and should not be construed as and shall not form part of an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any unit trusts. It may not be reproduced, distributed or published by any recipient for any purpose.