Best Buy Boosts Dividend by 7%

Best Buy (BBY) announced Thursday morning that it is increasing the company's quarterly cash dividend by 1 cents, or 7%, to 15 cents per common share. That would cost the electronics retailer an additional $17 million a year.

But the company has been trying to increase the return of excess cash to shareholders, Dow Jones says. The company finished fiscal 2010 with $1.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents, an increase of more than $1 billion versus fiscal 2009, the company reported at the end of March.

It also announced that it is resuming its share repurchase, after a one-year hiatus. Best Buy had $2.5 billion remaining under the previously approved plan.

As for the quarterly dividend, it would be payable on Oct. 26, 2010, to shareholders of record as of Oct. 5, 2010. Best Buy paid its first cash dividend in December 2003.

The company is also holding its regular meeting of shareholders Thursday at the Best Buy corporate campus in Richfield, Minnesota.

Shares rose nearly half a percent in recent premarket trading.