Funny numbers?

[Ghoulish Delight]

I've owned Disney stock for something like 20 years. I get a dividend check every year. For at least the last 10 years or so, that dividend check has been exactly the same, 21 cents per share. Through stock price gains and losses, through accquisitions and sell-offs, no matter what was happening with the company, I got exactly 21 cents per share.

Well, my check for last year showed up. All of a sudden, it's 24 cents per share. Huh? What was so spectacular about this year that warranted a sudden 14% increase, the first change in a decade? I've seen the numbers, they weren't that good.

Me thinks it's a bit of posturing. In a year where a buy-out was threatened, major stockholders withheld votes, and the company's namesake cut ties, this smells of a pathetic effort to placate stock holders, try to fool us into thinking the company came through the turmoil better off than ever.

I'm rather clueless as to the technical details of how stocks work. Can they do that? How are dividends calculated? They clearly can't be just an automatic formula based on company earnings, there's no way it would have remained constant for 10+ years. Can the board just change dividends to suit their needs?