Amgen Inc. may introduce its first dividend next month, rewarding investors whose stock in the world’s largest biotechnology company has fallen 33 percent since 2006, even as its cash hoard grew to $17.4 billion.
The move may be announced at an April 21 investor meeting, said Robyn Karnauskas, a Deutsche Bank analyst in New York. The dividend may yield 2.3 percent, with a quarterly payment of 30 cents a share, according to a Bloomberg projection. It would make Amgen, based in Thousand Oaks, the first company in the six-member Standard & Poor’s 500 Biotechnology Index to offer such a payout.
Some shareholders have sought a dividend since reports surfaced in November that Amgen may buy Swiss drugmaker Actelion Ltd. for $9.8 billion, a deal that troubled some investors.
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