$BP To Raise Dividend as Profits Rise 5%

“LONDON (AP) — Oil company BP is rewarding long-suffering shareholders with a substantial dividend increase just days after it sold a stake in a Russian joint venture for billions of dollars.

BP also revealed Tuesday that it made a net profit of $5.5 billion in the third quarter, more than offsetting the $1.34 billion loss reported in the previous three months when the company wrote down the value of some assets. It was also 5 percent higher than last year’s equivalent of $5.2 billion.

Most interest came with the news that BP was raising its quarterly dividend 12.5 percent to 9 cents per share. The company’s shares were up 5.3 percent to 447.6 pence in late morning trading in London.

“The results were much stronger than we and the market anticipated – almost entirely in refining and marketing where the clean result was $3 billion versus our forecast of $1.8 billion,” said Stuart Joyner at Investec Securities.”

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