SYDNEY, Feb 27, 2026, 18:04 AEDT — After-hours
- Wesfarmers closed down 0.6% on Friday, underperforming a firmer broader market.
- A late-week ASX filing updated foreign-currency details for the interim dividend.
- Focus now turns to the March dividend reinvestment pricing window and the March 31 payment.
Wesfarmers Ltd shares ended down 0.55% at A$79.62 on Friday, after trading between A$78.91 and A$80.00. The stock is down about 11% since Feb. 18. 1
An ASX filing on Thursday updated the foreign-currency settings for the interim dividend, including the exchange rates used for payments in pounds sterling and New Zealand dollars. The company set the dividend equivalents at 0.536316 pounds and 1.212066 New Zealand dollars per share. 2
The dividend itself is A$1.02 a share, fully franked — meaning it comes with Australian tax credits attached — and is due to be paid on March 31, the earlier filing showed. Wesfarmers’ dividend reinvestment plan, or DRP, has no discount this round and will set the allocation price off a 15-day volume-weighted average price (VWAP) from March 2 to March 20, the filing said. 3
The move in Wesfarmers came as the S&P/ASX 200 index finished up 0.25% to a fresh high, led by gains in miners and defensives. Wesfarmers lagged that tape. 4
Retail names were choppy late in the week. Coles and Harvey Norman both fell sharply on Friday after Coles flagged a steep drop in first-half profit, according to an ABC business live blog. 5
Wesfarmers has been wrestling with the same question the market keeps circling back to: how far cost-of-living pressure bites. After last week’s half-year result, CEO Rob Scott told reporters, “Inflation is arguably one of the major challenges for the Australian economy,” and pointed to uneven pressure across households; brokers also flagged the risk of “share price weakness” as investors parsed what drove the profit beat. 6
On Wesfarmers’ own dividend page, the interim dividend is shown at 102 cents a share with the dividend investment plan price still marked “TBC”. That leaves the DRP allocation price as the next small-but-watchable data point for income-focused holders. 7
In its half-year materials, Wesfarmers said the dividend investment plan is not underwritten and expected any plan shares to be bought on market. The company also set the last day for applications at Feb. 26. 8
But the downside case has not gone away. If inflation stays sticky and rates stay tight, discretionary spending can slow in a hurry — and the market has been quick to punish any hint that sales momentum is fading in big-box retail.
With the week done, attention shifts to the DRP pricing period starting March 2 and the March 31 dividend payment date on investor calendars. 9
