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Regular readers will know that we love our dividends at Simply Wall St, which is why it's exciting to see Kearny Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:KRNY) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 4 days. If you purchase the stock on or after the 3rd of September, you won't be eligible to receive this dividend, when it is paid on the 18th of September.
Kearny Financial's upcoming dividend is US$0.06 a share, following on from the last 12 months, when the company distributed a total of US$0.40 per share to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Kearny Financial has a trailing yield of 3.2% on the current stock price of $12.5. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. So we need to check whether the dividend payments are covered, and if earnings are growing.
View our latest analysis for Kearny Financial
Dividends are typically paid from company earnings. If a company pays more in dividends than it earned in profit, then the dividend could be unsustainable. Kearny Financial paid out a comfortable 45% of its profit last year.
When a company paid out less in dividends than it earned in profit, this generally suggests its dividend is affordable. The lower the % of its profit that it pays out, the greater the margin of safety for the dividend if the business enters a downturn.
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 fall far enough, the company could be forced to cut its dividend. It's encouraging to see Kearny Financial has grown its earnings rapidly, up 33% a year for the past five years.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. Kearny Financial has delivered 11% dividend growth per year on average over the past 10 years. Both per-share earnings and dividends have both been growing rapidly in recent times, which is great to see.
Final Takeaway
Is Kearny Financial an attractive dividend stock, or better left on the shelf? When companies are growing rapidly and retaining a majority of the profits within the business, it's usually a sign that reinvesting earnings creates more value than paying dividends to shareholders. This is one of the most attractive investment combinations under this analysis, as it can create substantial value for investors over the long run. In summary, Kearny Financial appears to have some promise as a dividend stock, and we'd suggest taking a closer look at it.