Mining conglomerate Vedanta on Thursday announced that its board will meet this week to consider and approve the first interim dividend for the current financial year.

“The board of directors of the company on Saturday, October 24, 2020, will consider and approve the first interim dividend on equity shares, if any, for financial year 2020-21. The record date for the purpose of determining the entitlement of the equity shareholders for the said dividend, if declared, is being fixed as Saturday, October 31, 2020,” the Anil Agarwal group firm said in a regulatory filing to the stock exchanges.

The announcement led to the shares of Vedanta ending higher on the bourses. On the BSE, the scrip settled at Rs 104.50, a rise of 3.21 per cent over its previous close.

Market circles have been expecting a high dividend payout from Vedanta after its delisting effort failed earlier this month.

Expectations rose earlier this week when group firm Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL) declared its highest interim dividend in 12 years at Rs 21.3 per share amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

The record date for paying the dividend is October 28. Hindustan Zinc had paid a higher dividend of Rs 30 per share in July 2008.

Vedanta Ltd holds a 64.92 per cent in Hindustan Zinc. This dividend payout came as Hindustan Zinc reported a 7 per cent fall in net profits for the quarter ended September 30.

Net profits declined to Rs 1,940 crore from Rs 2,081 crore in the same period of the previous year.

Sales, however, showed a growth of 25 per cent to Rs 5,660 crore against Rs 4,511 crore in the year-ago period.

On October 10, Vedanta Ltd announced that its voluntary delisting offer — to acquire the balance public shareholding and then delisting it from the stock exchange — had failed at the reverse book building stage.

The total number of shares tendered by Vedanta Ltd’s public shareholders fell 7 per cent short of the mandatory minimum 90 per cent for a successful delisting.