Should You Buy Southside Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:SBSI) For Its Dividend?

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Dividends play an important role in compounding returns in the long run and end up forming a sizeable part of investment returns. Southside Bancshares Inc (NASDAQ:SBSI) has returned to shareholders over the past 10 years, an average dividend yield of 4.00% annually. Does Southside Bancshares tick all the boxes of a great dividend stock? Below, I’ll take you through my analysis. Check out our latest analysis for Southside Bancshares

5 checks you should use to assess a dividend stock

Whenever I am looking at a potential dividend stock investment, I always check these five metrics:

  • Is their annual yield among the top 25% of dividend payers?

  • Has it paid dividend every year without dramatically reducing payout in the past?

  • Has the amount of dividend per share grown over the past?

  • Is its earnings sufficient to payout dividend at the current rate?

  • Based on future earnings growth, will it be able to continue to payout dividend at the current rate?

NasdaqGS:SBSI Historical Dividend Yield Jun 20th 18
NasdaqGS:SBSI Historical Dividend Yield Jun 20th 18

How well does Southside Bancshares fit our criteria?

The current trailing twelve-month payout ratio for the stock is 62.64%, which means that the dividend is covered by earnings. Furthermore, analysts have not forecasted a dividends per share for the future, which makes it hard to determine the yield shareholders should expect, and whether the current payout is sustainable, moving forward. Reliablity is an important factor for dividend stocks, particularly for income investors who want a strong track record of payment and a positive outlook for future payout. Although SBSI’s per share payments have increased in the past 10 years, it has not been a completely smooth ride. Investors have seen reductions in the dividend per share in the past, although, it has picked up again. In terms of its peers, Southside Bancshares generates a yield of 3.54%, which is on the low-side for Banks stocks.

Next Steps:

If you are building an income portfolio, then Southside Bancshares 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, 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 pertinent aspects you should further examine:

  1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for SBSI’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for SBSI’s outlook.

  2. Valuation: What is SBSI 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 SBSI 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.

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