Wesfarmers is Australia’s largest listed conglomerate and business across a number of sectors from insurance to coal mining and some of Australia’s most well known retail brands like Bunnings, K-mart and Officeworks. The company is included all of the Australia market index.
It used to own Coles but the supermarket was subsequently demerged from the group in 2019 and sold a majority of the shares in Coles in 2020. Looking back it made a big bet on retail just at the onset of the GFC and the management’s execution of a turnaround has been very impressive.
The conglomerate structure kept us on the sidelines of the ASX WES stock but it is increasingly evident it owns some business with a strong moat where it can earn above average return on the cost of capital.
The jewel in the crown of course is Bunnings. It is a leader in the Australian hardware DIY market and some recent mistakes aside is one business we really like.
Following the closure of Masters, Bunnings has maintained its industry leading position in Hardware retailing. The ability of this business to continue to grow market share and same store sales is very impressive. This only factor holding it back in our view going forward is the potential cyclical nature of the business but the results post Covid shows it is relative resilient than you expect.
Wesfarmers Dividend Yield and Share Price
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The dividend yield is calculated using the last interim, final dividends and exclude the special dividend the company issued after it sold Coles.
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Over the last couple of years we made a mistake of picking Woolworths over Wesfarmers shares in our core portfolio. WOW has significantly unperformed WES share price. It just shows only because a stock is expensive does not mean it is not a good buy.
Wesfarmers Dividend History
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Wesfarmers Dividend Dates
Interim Dividend : March / April
Final Dividend : September / October