Bassett Furniture Industries, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSET) Investors Should Think About This Before Buying It For Its Dividend
Today we'll take a closer look at Bassett Furniture Industries, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSET) from a dividend investor's perspective. Owning a strong business and reinvesting the dividends is widely seen as an attractive way of growing your wealth. If you are hoping to live on your dividends, it's important to be more stringent with your investments than the average punter. Regular readers know we like to apply the same approach to each dividend stock, and we hope you'll find our analysis useful.
In this case, Bassett Furniture Industries likely looks attractive to dividend investors, given its 7.8% dividend yield and nine-year payment history. It sure looks interesting on these metrics - but there's always more to the story . The company also returned around 11% of its market capitalisation to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks over the past year. Remember though, given the recent drop in its share price, Bassett Furniture Industries's yield will look higher, even though the market may now be expecting a decline in its long-term prospects. Some simple analysis can offer a lot of insights when buying a company for its dividend, and we'll go through this below.
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Payout ratios
Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. Although Bassett Furniture Industries pays a dividend, it was loss-making during the past year. When a company is loss-making, we next need to check to see if its cash flows can support the dividend.
The company paid out 71% of its free cash flow, which is not bad per se, but does start to limit the amount of cash Bassett Furniture Industries has available to meet other needs.
While the above analysis focuses on dividends relative to a company's earnings, we do note Bassett Furniture Industries's strong net cash position, which will let it pay larger dividends for a time, should it choose.
Consider getting our latest analysis on Bassett Furniture Industries's financial position here.
Dividend Volatility
Before buying a stock for its income, we want to see if the dividends have been stable in the past, and if the company has a track record of maintaining its dividend. The first recorded dividend for Bassett Furniture Industries, in the last decade, was nine years ago. It's good to see that Bassett Furniture Industries has been paying a dividend for a number of years. However, the dividend has been cut at least once in the past, and we're concerned that what has been cut once, could be cut again. During the past nine-year period, the first annual payment was US$0.12 in 2011, compared to US$0.50 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 17% per year over this time. The dividends haven't grown at precisely 17% every year, but this is a useful way to average out the historical rate of growth.
Bassett Furniture Industries has grown distributions at a rapid rate despite cutting the dividend at least once in the past. Companies that cut once often cut again, but it might be worth considering if the business has turned a corner.
Dividend Growth Potential
Given that the dividend has been cut in the past, we need to check if earnings are growing and if that might lead to stronger dividends in the future. Over the past five years, it looks as though Bassett Furniture Industries's EPS have declined at around 26% a year. A sharp decline in earnings per share is not great from from a dividend perspective, as even conservative payout ratios can come under pressure if earnings fall far enough.
Conclusion
To summarise, shareholders should always check that Bassett Furniture Industries's dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. We're not keen on the fact that Bassett Furniture Industries paid dividends despite reporting a loss over the past year, although fortunately its dividend was covered by cash flow. Second, earnings per share have been in decline, and its dividend has been cut at least once in the past. There are a few too many issues for us to get comfortable with Bassett Furniture Industries from a dividend perspective. Businesses can change, but we would struggle to identify why an investor should rely on this stock for their income.
Companies possessing a stable dividend policy will likely enjoy greater investor interest than those suffering from a more inconsistent approach. Still, investors need to consider a host of other factors, apart from dividend payments, when analysing a company. For instance, we've picked out 3 warning signs for Bassett Furniture Industries that investors should take into consideration.
If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%.
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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. Thank you for reading.
