Should Income Investors Look At People's United Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBCT) Before Its Ex-Dividend?
People’s United Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBCT) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next three days. Investors can purchase shares before the 30th of October in order to be eligible for this dividend, which will be paid on the 15th of November.
People’s United Financial’s upcoming dividend is US$0.18 a share, following on from the last 12 months, when the company distributed a total of US$0.72 per share to shareholders. Calculating the last year’s worth of payments shows that People’s United Financial has a trailing yield of 6.3% on the current share price of $11.44. Dividends are a major contributor to investment returns for long term holders, but only if the dividend continues to be paid. As a result, readers should always check whether People’s United Financial has been able to grow its dividends, or if the dividend might be cut.
Check out our latest analysis for People’s United Financial
If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable – hardly an ideal situation. People’s United Financial paid out more than half (62%) of its earnings last year, which is a regular payout ratio for most companies.
Generally speaking, the lower a company’s payout ratios, the more resilient its dividend usually is.
Click here to see the company’s payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Businesses with strong growth prospects usually make the best dividend payers, because it’s easier to grow dividends when earnings per share are improving. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. With that in mind, we’re encouraged by the steady growth at People’s United Financial, with earnings per share up 6.6% on average over the last five years.
Many investors will assess a company’s dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. People’s United Financial has delivered 1.7% dividend growth per year on average over the past 10 years.
Final Takeaway
Should investors buy People’s United Financial for the upcoming dividend? Earnings per share have been growing at a reasonable rate, and the company is paying out a bit over half its earnings as dividends. It might be worth researching if the company is reinvesting in growth projects that could grow earnings and dividends in the future, but for now we’re on the fence about its dividend prospects.
So if you want to do more digging on People’s United Financial, you’ll find it worthwhile knowing the risks that this stock faces. To help with this, we’ve discovered 3 warning signs for People’s United Financial (1 is significant!) that you ought to be aware of before buying the shares.
We wouldn’t recommend just buying the first dividend stock you see, though. Here’s a list of interesting dividend stocks with a greater than 2% yield and an upcoming dividend.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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