Investors who want to cash in on Real Estate Investors plc’s (AIM:RLE) upcoming dividend of £0.01 per share have only 3 days left to buy the shares before its ex-dividend date, 29 March 2018, in time for dividends payable on the 27 April 2018. Is this future income a persuasive enough catalyst for investors to think about Real Estate Investors as an investment today? Below, I’m going to look at the latest data and analyze the stock and its dividend property in further detail. Check out our latest analysis for Real Estate Investors

5 checks you should use to assess a dividend stock

Whenever I am looking at a potential dividend stock investment, I always check these five metrics:

• Is their annual yield among the top 25% of dividend payers?

• Has its dividend been stable over the past (i.e. no missed payments or significant payout cuts)?

• Has the amount of dividend per share grown over the past?

• Is it able to pay the current rate of dividends from its earnings?

• Will it have the ability to keep paying its dividends going forward?

How well does Real Estate Investors fit our criteria?

The current trailing twelve-month payout ratio for the stock is 52.32%, meaning the dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Going forward, analysts expect RLE’s payout to increase to 96.20% of its earnings, which leads to a dividend yield of around 7.40%.

If there is one thing that you want to be reliable in your life, it’s dividend stocks and their constant income stream. Unfortunately, it is really too early to view Real Estate Investors as a dividend investment. It has only been consistently paying dividends for 6 years, however, standard practice for reliable payers is to look for a 10-year minimum track record. Relative to peers, Real Estate Investors has a yield of 6.52%, which is high for Real Estate stocks.

Next Steps:

If Real Estate Investors is in your portfolio for cash-generating reasons, there may be better alternatives out there. However, if you are not strictly just a dividend investor, the stock could still offer some interesting investment opportunities. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, you should always research extensively before deciding whether or not a stock is an appropriate investment for you. I always recommend analysing the company’s fundamentals and underlying business before making an investment decision. Below, I’ve compiled three fundamental aspects you should further examine:

• Valuation: What is RLE worth today? Even if the stock is a cash cow, it’s not worth an infinite price. The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether RLE is currently mispriced by the market.

• Management Team: An experienced management team on the helm increases our confidence in the business – take a look at who sits on Real Estate Investors’s board and the CEO’s back ground.

• 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 pass 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.