Interested In Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OXY)’s Upcoming $0.77 Dividend? You Have 3 Days Left
Shares of Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) will begin trading ex-dividend in 3 days. To qualify for the dividend check of $0.77 per share, investors must have owned the shares prior to 08 December 2017, which is the last day the company’s management will finalize their list of shareholders to which they will send dividend payments. Investors looking for higher income-generating stocks to add to their portfolio should keep reading, as I take a deeper dive into OXY’s latest financial data to analyse its dividend attributes. Check out our latest analysis for Occidental Petroleum
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 consistently paid a stable dividend without missing a payment or drastically cutting payout?
Has dividend per share amount increased over the past?
Is is able to pay the current rate of dividends from its earnings?
Will the company be able to keep paying dividend based on the future earnings growth?
How does Occidental Petroleum fare?
Occidental Petroleum has a payout ratio of more than 200% of earnings, meaning that the dividend is predominantly funded by retained earnings. Going forward, analysts expect OXY’s payout to fall to 149.86% of its earnings, which leads to a dividend yield of around 4.41%. In addition to this, EPS should increase to $1.33, meaning that the lower payout ratio does not necessarily implicate a lower dividend payment. 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. In the case of OXY it has increased its DPS from $1 to $3.08 in the past 10 years. During this period it has not missed a payment, as one would expect for a company increasing its dividend. These are all positive signs of a great, reliable dividend stock. Relative to peers, Occidental Petroleum produces a yield of 4.38%, which is high for oil, gas and consumable fuels stocks.
What this means for you:
Are you a shareholder?
Are you a shareholder? Investors of Occidental Petroleum can continue to expect strong dividends from the stock moving forward. With its favorable dividend characteristics, OXY is one worth keeping around in your income portfolio. But, depending on your portfolio composition, it may be worth exploring other income stocks to enhance your diversification, or even look at high-growth stocks to supplement your steady income stocks. I suggest continuing your research by taking a look at my interactive free list of dividend rockstars as well as high-growth stocks to potentially add to your holdings.
Are you a potential investor? With these dividend metrics in mind, I definitely rank Occidental Petroleum as a strong income stock, and is worth further research for anyone who considers dividends an important part of their portfolio strategy. As always, I urge potential investors to try and get a good understanding of the underlying business and its fundamentals before deciding on an investment. Another aspect to consider for OXY is how much it’s actually worth. Can you still benefit from a mispricing of the stock? Take a look at our latest free analysis to find out!
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.
