Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc (NYSE:BXMT): Ex-Dividend Is In 2 Days, Should You Buy?
Have you been keeping an eye on Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc’s (NYSE:BXMT) upcoming dividend of US$0.62 per share payable on the 16 July 2018? Then you only have 2 days left before the stock starts trading ex-dividend on the 28 June 2018. What does this mean for current shareholders and potential investors? Below, I will explain how holding Blackstone Mortgage Trust can impact your portfolio income stream, by analysing the stock’s most recent financial data and dividend attributes. View out our latest analysis for Blackstone Mortgage Trust
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 it the top 25% annual dividend yield payer?
Has it consistently paid a stable dividend without missing a payment or drastically cutting payout?
Has dividend per share amount increased over the past?
Can it afford to pay the current rate of dividends from its earnings?
Will it be able to continue to payout at the current rate in the future?
How well does Blackstone Mortgage Trust fit our criteria?
REITs are a special-case dividend payer. This is because a high percentage of their earnings are required to be paid out as dividends. The current trailing twelve-month payout ratio for BXMT is 108.41%, meaning that a portion of dividend payments are funded by retained earnings. However, going forward, analysts expect BXMT’s payout to fall into a more sustainable range of 91.80% of its earnings, which leads to a dividend yield of 7.68%. Furthermore, EPS should increase to $2.39, meaning that the lower payout ratio does not necessarily implicate a lower dividend payment.
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. Not only have dividend payouts from Blackstone Mortgage Trust fallen over the past 10 years, it has also been highly volatile during this time, with drops of over 25% in some years. These characteristics do not bode well for income investors seeking reliable stream of dividends.
Relative to peers, Blackstone Mortgage Trust generates a yield of 7.59%, which is on the low-side for Mortgage REITs stocks.
Next Steps:
After digging a little deeper into Blackstone Mortgage Trust’s yield, it’s easy to see why you should be cautious investing in the company just for the dividend. 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, I recommend taking sufficient time to understand its core business and determine whether the company and its investment properties suit your overall goals. I’ve put together three relevant aspects you should further research:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for BXMT’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for BXMT’s outlook.
Valuation: What is BXMT 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 BXMT is currently mispriced by the market.
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.
