👉 Background: Qantas is Australia's national airline and has been working on rehabilitating its brand over the past few years. It's trying to move on from the ghost flight, the CEO saga and the wrongful dismissal of nearly 1,200 staff. Since then, it has invested in stronger customer service, more on-time flights and more trust.

‍👉 What happened: It seems like Qantas' investments are working as Qantas announced an underlying profit before tax rose 15% to $2.39 billion over the last financial year. This is its second-best profit result ever - behind their FY23. And with that juicy profit, Qantas will be investing big into new planes for both Qantas and Jetstar.

‍👉 What else: But not only that, Qantas has announced it will pay out $400 million in dividends to investors. This is the first financial year that it has issued a dividend to investors since COVID. Next minute: Qantas’ shares jumped 5% and nearly 80% in the past 12 months. Investors are liking that dividend… again.

‍What's the key learning?

‍💡Many investors invest in companies based on the type of stock, including growth stocks, income stocks, value stocks, defensive stocks, and more. Dividend stocks live and die by consistency, so once the payouts stop, investors need convincing that they’ll flow again.

💡Pre‑COVID, Qantas offered investors a predictable stream of semi-annual dividends. As a result, it was considered an income-producing stock (like Telstra, who’s been dishing out half-yearly dividends to investors since 1998).

💡But when COVID struck, Qantas needed to preserve cash to survive, so its dividends were suspended. That meant it stopped being an income stock in the eyes of investors. While Qantas has restarted dividend payouts in this financial year, there's no guarantee that this will be a predictable dividend in years to come.