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Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT) stock is about to trade ex-dividend in 3 days time. You can purchase shares before the 19th of July in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 20th of August.
Caterpillar's next dividend payment will be US$1.03 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$3.44 to shareholders. Looking at the last 12 months of distributions, Caterpillar has a trailing yield of approximately 3.0% on its current stock price of $138.36. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Caterpillar's dividend is reliable and sustainable. So we need to investigate whether Caterpillar can afford its dividend, and if the dividend could grow.
Check out our latest analysis for Caterpillar
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. Caterpillar paid out a comfortable 32% of its profit last year. 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. Fortunately, it paid out only 49% of its free cash flow in the past year.
It's positive to see that Caterpillar's dividend is covered by both profits and cash flow, since this is generally a sign that the dividend is sustainable, and a lower payout ratio usually suggests a greater margin of safety before the dividend gets cut.
Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Companies with consistently growing earnings per share generally make the best dividend stocks, as they usually find it easier to grow dividends per share. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. Fortunately for readers, Caterpillar's earnings per share have been growing at 13% a year for the past five years.
The company has managed to grow earnings at a rapid rate, while reinvesting most of the profits within the business. This will make it easier to fund future growth efforts and we think this is an attractive combination - plus the dividend can always be increased later.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. In the past 10 years, Caterpillar has increased its dividend at approximately 9.4% a year on average. It's encouraging to see the company lifting dividends while earnings are growing, suggesting at least some corporate interest in rewarding shareholders.