In the News….
Holiday spending soars
Planning to jet away on a summer holiday? If so, you’re in good company – 83% of UK adults1 are planning holidays this year. Interestingly, 41% of people are intending to spend more than they did last year – boosting budgets by nearly £3,000 per trip, with 14% of those expecting to pay more, setting aside over £5,000 per trip and 2% over £20,000. People are obviously keen to spend their hard-earned money on travelling, with data showing holiday spending has soared 520% since the pandemic2, as priorities shift. If you’re off on your travels this summer – bon voyage!
Dividends set to bounce back
Dividends paid out by UK companies fell by 4.6% in the first three months of 2025, new figures3 reveal, but payouts still managed to beat expectations. The headline total paid out to shareholders in the first quarter was £14bn, down from £14.7bn a year earlier. Lower one-off special dividends were the main reason for the fall.
One major outlier to the decline was pharmaceutical companies, which showed the fastest dividend growth in a decade during the quarter. In Q1 2025; they paid out £3.2bn, up £228m from 2024. For the fourth consecutive year, pharma giant AstraZeneca was the largest dividend payer in Q1.
The report suggests Q2 will be positive. Mark Cleland, CEO of Governance Services and CEO of Issuer Services UCIA, commented, “As US trade policy convulses capital markets, investors are absorbing the likely impact on corporate profits. Despite this, Q1 was a little better than we expected, and Q2 is shaping up well too, with the fastest growth coming from banks.”
For the whole of the year, Computershare upgraded its expectation for underlying growth to 1.8% on a constant currency basis, suggesting a total of £85.6bn in regular dividends for 2025. Let’s see what Q3 and Q4 hold in store.
1Computershare, 2025, 2Aviva, 2025, 3Nationwide, 2025
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