It looks like United Community Banks, Inc. (NASDAQ:UCBI) is about to go ex-dividend in the next 3 days. This means that investors who purchase shares on or after the 12th of September will not receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 5th of October.
United Community Banks's next dividend payment will be US$0.17 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$0.68 to shareholders. Looking at the last 12 months of distributions, United Community Banks has a trailing yield of approximately 2.6% on its current stock price of $26.25. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether United Community Banks's dividend is reliable and sustainable. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.
See our latest analysis for United Community Banks
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. That's why it's good to see United Community Banks paying out a modest 29% of its earnings.
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 shrinking earnings are tricky from a dividend perspective. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. United Community Banks's earnings per share have fallen at approximately 13% a year over the previous 5 years. Ultimately, when earnings per share decline, the size of the pie from which dividends can be paid, shrinks.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. In the past 5 years, United Community Banks has increased its dividend at approximately 41% a year on average.
The Bottom Line
Is United Community Banks worth buying for its dividend? Earnings per share have shrunk noticeably in recent years, although we like that the company has a low payout ratio. This could suggest a cut to the dividend may not be a major risk in the near future. It might be worth researching if the company is reinvesting in growth projects that could grow earnings and dividends in the future, but for now we're on the fence about its dividend prospects.