Symphony Limited (NSE:SYMPHONY) Pays A 0.08% In Just 3
Symphony Limited (NSE:SYMPHONY) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 3 days. You will need to purchase shares before the 9th of August to receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 26th of August.
Symphony's next dividend payment will be ₹1.00 per share, and in the last 12 months, the company paid a total of ₹4.50 per share. Last year's total dividend payments show that Symphony has a trailing yield of 0.4% on the current share price of ₹1259.25. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.
View our latest analysis for Symphony
Dividends are typically paid out of company income, so if a company pays out more than it earned, its dividend is usually at a higher risk of being cut. Symphony paid out just 23% of its profit last year, which we think is conservatively low and leaves plenty of margin for unexpected circumstances. A useful secondary check can be to evaluate whether Symphony generated enough free cash flow to afford its dividend. What's good is that dividends were well covered by free cash flow, with the company paying out 24% of its cash flow last year.
It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously.
Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Stocks with flat earnings can still be attractive dividend payers, but it is important to be more conservative with your approach and demand a greater margin for safety when it comes to dividend sustainability. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. With that in mind, we're not enthused to see that Symphony's earnings per share have remained effectively flat over the past five years. We'd take that over an earnings decline any day, but in the long run, the best dividend stocks all grow their earnings per share.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. Since the start of our data, 10 years ago, Symphony has lifted its dividend by approximately 46% a year on average.
Final Takeaway
Is Symphony worth buying for its dividend? While it's not great to see that earnings per share are effectively flat over the ten-year period we checked, at least the payout ratios are low and conservative. To summarise, Symphony looks okay on this analysis, although it doesn't appear a stand-out opportunity.
Curious what other investors think of Symphony? See what analysts are forecasting, with this visualisation of its historical and future estimated earnings and cash flow .
If you're in the market for dividend stocks, we recommend checking our list of top dividend stocks with a greater than 2% yield and an upcoming dividend.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
