Host Hotels & Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST): Ex-Dividend Is In 2 Days, Should You Buy?
On the 16 July 2018, Host Hotels & Resorts Inc (NYSE:HST) will be paying shareholders an upcoming dividend amount of US$0.20 per share. However, investors must have bought the company’s stock before 28 June 2018 in order to qualify for the payment. That means you have only 2 days left! Is this future income a persuasive enough catalyst for investors to think about Host Hotels & Resorts 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. See our latest analysis for Host Hotels & Resorts
5 checks you should use to assess 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 it increased its dividend per share amount over the past?
Is its earnings sufficient to payout dividend at the current rate?
Will it have the ability to keep paying its dividends going forward?
How does Host Hotels & Resorts fare?
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 HST is 89.70%, which is in-line with most other REIT stocks. In the near future, analysts are predicting a higher payout ratio of 100.46%, leading to a dividend yield of around 3.96%. However, EPS is forecasted to fall to $0.84 in the upcoming year. Therefore, although payout is expected to increase, the fall in earnings may not equate to higher dividend income.
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. Whilst its per-share payments have increased during the past 10 years, there has been some hiccups. Investors have seen reductions in the dividend per share in the past, although, it has picked up again.
Relative to peers, Host Hotels & Resorts has a yield of 3.97%, which is on the low-side for REITs stocks.
Next Steps:
If you are building an income portfolio, then Host Hotels & Resorts is a complicated choice since it has some positive aspects as well as negative ones. However, if you are not strictly just a dividend investor, the stock could still offer some interesting investment opportunities. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, I urge potential investors to try and get a good understanding of the underlying business and its fundamentals before deciding on an investment. I’ve put together three relevant aspects you should look at:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for HST’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for HST’s outlook.
Valuation: What is HST 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 HST 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.
