$4bn all in a days work for Andrew Forrest in record iron ore payday
Iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest has ‘shot the light out’ with Fortescue’s latest big dividend, handing him the biggest cheque in corporate memory.
Booming iron ore profits have led to a $4bn day for Andrew Forrest, as the mining billionaire took home what is likely to be the biggest individual dividend cheque in Australian corporate history.
Dr Forrest, the chairman and founder of Fortescue Metals Group, signed over an almost $2.4bn dividend to himself on a day when the payout dwarfed yet another lucrative day for him and Fortescue shareholders on the ASX.
Fortescue shares rose 6.6 per cent after the company on Monday announced a record $US10.3bn ($14.08bn) after-tax profit, adding $1.5bn to Dr Forrest’s paper wealth that now reaches more than $24bn in his mining giant alone.
The massive dividend, Dr Forrest said, was testament to Fortescue’s original aim when he started it in 2003 of never stopping until it was “one of the world’s first high growth and high yield companies”. Fortescue had “absolutely shot the lights out with that” strategy, he said.
“The reward for shareholders, the monetisation for shareholders, is dividends.”
Dr Forrest, who adopted the honorific after earning a PhD in marine science at the University of WA in 2019 although is still widely known as “Twiggy”, has been a big beneficiary.
He has now been paid more than $6bn in dividends in the past three years alone and more than $8bn since Fortescue started payouts to shareholders a decade ago.
The company has risen from a roughly 3c stock in 2003 to trading at more than $21 today.
“We are still easily Australia’s highest return to shareholders over 20 years … by many times,” Dr Forrest said. “That growth I have never seen before in iron ore to now.”
The Fortescue chairman’s payout is for now above other iron ore magnates such as fellow member of The List – Australia’s Richest 250, Gina Rinehart.
While her privately held Hancock Prospecting will undoubtedly reveal a record profit in October, Mrs Rinehart shared in more than $2bn of dividends over consecutive quarterly payments earlier this year from her giant Roy Hill mining operations.
While he reaps the rewards of the iron ore boom and puts more into his Minderoo charitable foundation , Dr Forrest has bigger plans. He wants to make Fortescue the biggest renewable energy company in the world through the development of clean energy projects in fuels like hydrogen.
This, he claimed on Monday, would be just as lucrative for shareholders one day while comparing current scepticism with what he once faced more than a decade ago with Fortescue.
“There’s been a generous, highly disciplined dividend policy and I see no reason for that to change when it comes to accessing what will be the largest industry in the world and that’s the renewable sector. (The) monetisation will be dividends.”