Is Eagle Bancorp Montana Inc (NASDAQ:EBMT) A Great Dividend Stock?
A sizeable part of portfolio returns can be produced by dividend stocks due to their contribution to compounding returns in the long run. Historically, Eagle Bancorp Montana Inc (NASDAQ:EBMT) has paid dividends to shareholders, and these days it yields 2.2%. Should it have a place in your portfolio? Let’s take a look at Eagle Bancorp Montana in more detail.
View our latest analysis for Eagle Bancorp Montana
5 questions to ask before buying a dividend stock
When assessing a stock as a potential addition to my dividend Portfolio, I look at these five areas:
Is it paying an annual yield above 75% of dividend payers?
Has it consistently paid a stable dividend without missing a payment or drastically cutting payout?
Has the amount of dividend per share grown over the past?
Is its earnings sufficient to payout dividend at the current rate?
Will it be able to continue to payout at the current rate in the future?
How does Eagle Bancorp Montana fare?
The company currently pays out 47% of its earnings as a dividend, according to its trailing twelve-month data, which means that the dividend is covered by earnings. In the near future, analysts are predicting lower payout ratio of 21%, leading to a dividend yield of 2.3%. However, EPS should increase to $1.41, meaning that the lower payout ratio does not necessarily implicate a lower dividend payment.
When thinking about whether a dividend is sustainable, another factor to consider is the cash flow. Companies with strong cash flow can sustain a higher payout ratio, while companies with weaker cash flow generally cannot.
If there is one thing that you want to be reliable in your life, it’s dividend stocks and their constant income stream. Not only have dividend payouts from Eagle Bancorp Montana fallen over the past 10 years, it has also been highly volatile during this time, with drops of over 25% in some years. This means that dividend hunters should probably steer clear of the stock, at least for now until the track record improves.
Compared to its peers, Eagle Bancorp Montana generates a yield of 2.2%, which is on the low-side for Banks stocks.
Next Steps:
If you are building an income portfolio, then Eagle Bancorp Montana 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. There are three fundamental factors you should further research:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for EBMT’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for EBMT’s outlook.
Valuation: What is EBMT 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 EBMT 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 past 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. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
