Old Republic (ORI) Shares Up as Board OKs Special Dividend
Shares of Old Republic International Corporation ORI inched up 1% in the last trading session as its board of directors approved a special, one-time cash dividend of $1.50 per share. This marks second special dividend in this year.
Shareholders of record as of Sep 15 will receive the special dividend on Oct 6. In January 2021, the company paid a special, one-time cash dividend of $ $1.00 per share.
A solid financial foundation and operational performance should continue to support Old Republic International to engage in shareholder-friendly moves. Banking on better segmentation, improved risk selection, pricing precision and increased use of analytics, the General Insurance segment should continue to deliver solid results. Its Title insurance business will likely continue to benefit from expanding presence in commercial real estate market. The third largest title insurer in the country has been strengthening its balance sheet with improving cash balance and low leverage ratio.
Per Mergent’s Dividend Achievers, the company boasts being one of 111 companies that have posted at least 25 consecutive years of annual dividend growth. Since Dec 31, 2016, the board has declared regular and special cash dividends of nearly $2.4 billion or about 72% of the earnings.
Concurrently, the board of directors also declared a quarterly dividend of 22 cents per share. Banking on strong capital position, the company increased dividend for 40 straight years and paid out dividend for last 80 years. Its dividend yield of 3.4% betters the industry average of 2%, making it an attractive pick for yield-seeking investors.
Share of the Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) title insurer has rallied 32.2% year to date compared with the industry’s increase of 14.1% Segmental strength and solid capital position should help it retain the bull run.
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Among other insurers, that have engaged in enhancing shareholders’ value include American Financial Group’s AFG board of directors approved a special cash dividend of $2.00 per share. Also, the board of directors of Unum Group UNM and RLI Corp. RLI hiked quarterly dividend by 5.3% and 12%, respectively.
You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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