Piper Jaffray Companies said Thursday it plans to raise its regularly quarterly dividend by 20% to 37.5 cents a share, starting in the first quarter of 2018. The increase comes after the broker and asset management company said it approved a new dividend policy, in which it will return from 30% to 50% of its adjusted net income to shareholders each year. As a result, the company plans to declare an annual special dividend payable in the first quarter of each year to reach that target. Based on Thursday’s stock closing price of $69.90, new regular dividend’s annual rate implies a dividend yield of 2.15%, compared with the implied yield for the SPDR Financial Select Sector ETF of 1.49% and for the S&P 500 of 1.93%. The stock has run up 20.5% over the past three months, while the financial ETF has gained 3.8% and the S&P 500 has climbed 4.9%.
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