BMY has such an outsized dividend yield already (5.1% at today’s closing price), it hardly makes sense to raise the dividend with the likelihood of higher tax rates on dividends in 2011.
p.s. PCL, the timber company, is one of my favorite stocks. Regardless of what happens to the tax rate on dividends, PCL’s quarterly distributions will continue to be taxable to shareholders at the LT capital-gains rate due to an oddity in the tax code that treats timber growth as a capital gain.
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be
the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated
in any area of human knowledge!”