Only 2 Days Left To Unitil Corporation (NYSE:UTL)’s Ex-Dividend Date, Is It Worth Buying?
Investors who want to cash in on Unitil Corporation’s (NYSE:UTL) upcoming dividend of US$0.36 per share have only 2 days left to buy the shares before its ex-dividend date, 14 August 2018, in time for dividends payable on the 29 August 2018. Should you diversify into Unitil and boost your portfolio income stream? Well, keep on reading because today, I’m going to look at the latest data and analyze the stock and its dividend property in further detail.
View our latest analysis for Unitil
5 questions I ask before picking 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 paid dividend every year without dramatically reducing payout in the past?
Has dividend per share risen in the past couple of years?
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 well does Unitil fit our criteria?
Unitil has a trailing twelve-month payout ratio of 64.43%, which means that the dividend is covered by earnings. In the near future, analysts are predicting a payout ratio of 65.60%, leading to a dividend yield of 3.05%. In addition to this, EPS is forecasted to fall to $2.21 in the upcoming year.
If there’s one type of stock you want to be reliable, it’s dividend stocks and their stable income-generating ability. In the case of UTL it has increased its DPS from $1.38 to $1.46 in the past 10 years. It has also been paying out dividend consistently during this time, as you’d expect for a company increasing its dividend levels. These are all positive signs of a great, reliable dividend stock.
In terms of its peers, Unitil generates a yield of 2.94%, which is on the low-side for Integrated Utilities stocks.
Next Steps:
Taking into account the dividend metrics, Unitil ticks most of the boxes as a strong dividend investment, putting it in my list of top dividend payers. 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. There are three pertinent aspects you should look at:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for UTL’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for UTL’s outlook.
Historical Performance: What has UTL’s returns been like over the past? Go into more detail in the past track record analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of our analysis for more clarity.
Other 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.
