B&G Foods Declares Quarterly Dividend

B&G Foods, Inc. (NYSE: BGS) announced today that its Board of Directors declared yesterday a quarterly cash dividend of $0.19 per share of common stock. The dividend is payable on January 30, 2023 to stockholders of record as of December 30, 2022.

With yesterday’s action, the new intended dividend rate for the Company’s common stock is $0.76 per share per annum. At the closing market price of the common stock on November 8, 2022, the new intended dividend rate represents an annualized yield of 5.0%. This is the 73^rd consecutive quarterly dividend declared by the Board of Directors since B&G Foods’ initial public offering in October 2004.

Casey Keller, President and Chief Executive Officer of B&G Foods, stated, “The new dividend rate is sustainable in both the short- and long-term, consistent with the Company’s desire to provide stockholders with an attractive and reliable return on their investment, and consistent with our commitment to reduce our leverage. In large part because of the current inflationary environment and rising interest rates under our credit agreement, the prior dividend rate resulted in substantially all our excess cash being paid in dividends. The new dividend rate approved yesterday by our Board of Directors, while still paying a substantial portion of our excess cash to stockholders, provides for a significant portion of our excess cash to be retained in our business for debt repayment or other business needs that may arise.”

Although the Board of Directors has reduced the dividend rate under the Company’s dividend policy, the Board of Directors has reaffirmed the policy itself. The Company’s dividend policy reflects a basic judgment that its stockholders are better served when the Company distributes a substantial portion of its cash available to pay dividends to them instead of retaining it in the business. Under this policy, a substantial portion of the cash generated by the Company in excess of operating needs, interest and principal payments on indebtedness, capital expenditures sufficient to maintain its properties and other assets is in general distributed as regular quarterly cash dividends (up to the intended dividend rate as determined by the Board of Directors) and not retained by the Company.