giants2010

Does it matter? Increase in dividend is free cash flow for short until expiration, because forward is priced to be arbitrage free at initiation.

Any increase in the stock price will benefit long at expiration, but the additional dividends paid are loss for long since they were not factored in at contract initiation and the whole point that someone is long on the stock forward would be to capture all the growth. However, the expected stock price using discount models is irrelevant in forward evaluation.