Yahoo's dividend feed can post a single declared dividend twice as one doubled row

Claim

This is not [[pitfall-yahoo-dividend-feed-applies-spinoff-factor]]. That note describes a retroactive division of the whole pre-spin history by a split factor. This is a single row posted at twice its declared value, with every neighbouring row correct.

Evidence — IHG, 2026-08-26

get_stock_actions("IHG") returned:

Ex-date	Yahoo	IHG declared
2024-08-30	0.532	53.2¢ interim FY2024	✅
2025-04-04	2.288	114.4¢ final FY2024	❌ exactly 2 × 114.4
2025-08-22	0.586	58.6¢ interim FY2025	✅
2026-04-10	1.259	125.9¢ final FY2025	✅

IHG's FY2024 dividend was interim 53.2¢ + final 114.4¢ = 167.6¢, +10%. Yahoo's series implies 53.2 + 228.8 = 282.0¢, +85% — followed by an apparent −35% cut the next year as the series returns to normal. Neither happened.

There was no split, no share consolidation, no special dividend, and no currency event on that date. (IHG's GBp→USD trading-currency change was 2 Jan 2026, nine months later, and does not affect a USD ADR series.)

What breaks

Dividend CAGR — a phantom +85% year followed by a phantom −35% year.
"Consecutive years of dividend growth" counters break: the series shows a cut that never occurred, which can disqualify a genuine dividend grower from a screen.
Payout ratio for that year roughly doubles.
DYT — a trailing-twelve-month yield computed across the bad row is overstated.

What did not break here: the current TTM yield, because the bad row had already rolled out of the twelve-month window. That is luck, not safety — the same defect inside the window would corrupt the live yield.

Guard

Reconcile the dividend series against the issuer's declared interim and final amounts before using it. Two cheap tells that need no external source:

A row that is a clean integer multiple of a neighbouring row of the same type (final-vs-final, interim-vs-interim). 2.288 = 2 × 1.144 is the signature.
A growth rate that breaks the company's own stated policy. IHG had raised the dividend ~10% a year for four years; +85% then −35% is not a policy, it is a data error.

For UK/European issuers, the declared amounts are in the results RNS as "interim dividend of X¢" and "final dividend of Y¢" — one search confirms both.

What would falsify this

A disclosed special dividend, capital return or consolidation on 2025-04-04 that IHG's own FY2024 results release does not mention. Checked — the release declares a final dividend of 114.4¢ and nothing else.

[[pitfall-yahoo-dividend-feed-applies-spinoff-factor]] — different mechanism, same feed. [[pitfall-dyt-inverts-when-price-caused-the-yield]] — the other reason a yield series lies. [[pitfall-yahoo-dividend-yield-uses-previous-close]].

History