3 Days Left To The Rank Group Plc (LON:RNK)’s Ex-Dividend Date, Is It Worth Buying?
On the 15 March 2018, The Rank Group Plc (LSE:RNK) will be paying shareholders an upcoming dividend amount of £0.02 per share. However, investors must have bought the company’s stock before 15 February 2018 in order to qualify for the payment. That means you have only 3 days left! Is this future income a persuasive enough catalyst for investors to think about Rank Group as an investment today? Below, I’m going to look at the latest data and analyze the stock and its dividend property in further detail. Check out our latest analysis for Rank Group
5 checks you should use to assess a dividend stock
If you are a dividend investor, you should always assess these five key metrics:
Is their annual yield among the top 25% of dividend payers?
Does it consistently pay out dividends without missing a payment of significantly cutting payout?
Has dividend per share amount increased over the past?
Is it able to pay the current rate of dividends from its earnings?
Will the company be able to keep paying dividend based on the future earnings growth?
Does Rank Group pass our checks?
Rank Group has a trailing twelve-month payout ratio of 48.59%, which means that the dividend is covered by earnings. In the near future, analysts are predicting a payout ratio of 50.28%, leading to a dividend yield of around 3.85%. Moreover, EPS should increase to £0.16. If dividend is a key criteria in your investment consideration, then you need to make sure the dividend stock you’re eyeing out is reliable in its payments. Dividend payments from Rank Group have been volatile in the past 10 years, with some years experiencing significant drops of over 25%. These characteristics do not bode well for income investors seeking reliable stream of dividends. Compared to its peers, Rank Group generates a yield of 3.27%, which is high for Hospitality stocks but still below the market’s top dividend payers.
Next Steps:
If you are building an income portfolio, then Rank Group is a complicated choice since it has some positive aspects as well as negative ones. But if you are not exclusively a dividend investor, the stock could still be an interesting investment opportunity. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, you should always research extensively before deciding whether or not a stock is an appropriate investment for you. I always recommend analysing the company’s fundamentals and underlying business before making an investment decision. There are three important aspects you should further research:
1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for RNK’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for RNK’s outlook.
2. Valuation: What is RNK worth today? Even if the stock is a cash cow, it’s not worth an infinite price. The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether RNK is currently mispriced by the market.
3. Dividend Rockstars: Are there better dividend payers with stronger fundamentals out there? Check out our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
