In This Article:
Want to participate in a short research study? Help shape the future of investing tools and you could win a $250 gift card!
ELGI Equipments Limited (NSE:ELGIEQUIP) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 3 days. Investors can purchase shares before the 25th of July in order to be eligible for this dividend, which will be paid on the 28th of August.
ELGI Equipments's upcoming dividend is ₹1.30 a share, following on from the last 12 months, when the company distributed a total of ₹1.30 per share to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, ELGI Equipments stock has a trailing yield of around 0.5% on the current share price of ₹259.7. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether ELGI Equipments's dividend is reliable and sustainable. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.
View our latest analysis for ELGI Equipments
Dividends are usually paid out of company profits, so if a company pays out more than it earned then its dividend is usually at greater risk of being cut. ELGI Equipments has a low and conservative payout ratio of just 20% of its income after tax. Yet cash flows are even more important than profits for assessing a dividend, so we need to see if the company generated enough cash to pay its distribution. The good news is it paid out just 16% of its free cash flow in the 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?
Businesses with strong growth prospects usually make the best dividend payers, because it's easier to grow dividends when earnings per share are improving. If earnings decline and the company is forced to cut its dividend, investors could watch the value of their investment go up in smoke. For this reason, we're glad to see ELGI Equipments's earnings per share have risen 18% per annum over the last five years. Earnings per share are growing rapidly and the company is keeping more than half of its earnings within the business; an attractive combination which could suggest the company is focused on reinvesting to grow earnings further. Fast-growing businesses that are reinvesting heavily are enticing from a dividend perspective, especially since they can often increase the payout ratio later.