Attention dividend hunters! The Go-Ahead Group plc (LSE:GOG) will be distributing its dividend of £0.72 per share in 3 days time, on the 24 November 2017, and will start trading ex-dividend on the 09 November 2017. Investors looking for higher income-generating stocks to add to their portfolio should keep reading, as I examine GOG’s latest financial data to analyse its dividend characteristics. View our latest analysis for Go-Ahead Group

5 checks you should use to assess a dividend stock

When assessing a stock as a potential addition to my dividend Portfolio, I look at these five areas:

• Is its 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 dividend per share amount increased over the past?

• Can it afford to pay the current rate of dividends from its earnings?

• Will it be able to continue to payout at the current rate in the future?

How does Go-Ahead Group fare?

The company currently pays out 49.15% of its earnings as a dividend, meaning the dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Looking forward, analysts expect GOG to pay out 59.16% of its earnings leading to a dividend yield of 5.75%. Furthermore, EPS should decrease to £1.72. This means the company should be able to continue to payout dividends. If there’s one type of stock you want to be reliable, it’s dividend stocks and their stable income-generating ability. Although GOG’s per share payments have increased in the past 10 years, it has not been a completely smooth ride. Shareholders would have seen a few years of reduced payments in this time. In terms of its peers, Go-Ahead Group produces a yield of 5.75%, which is high for road and rail stocks.

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? With Go-Ahead Group producing strong dividend income for your portfolio over the past few years, you can take comfort in knowing that this stock will still continue to be a robust dividend generator moving forward. However, depending on your current portfolio, it may be valuable exploring other dividend stocks to increase diversification, or even look at high-growth stocks to complement your steady income stocks. I encourage you to continue your research by exploring my interactive free list of dividend rockstars as well as high-growth stocks to potentially add to your holdings.

Are you a potential investor? With this in mind, I definitely rank Go-Ahead Group as a strong dividend stock, and makes it worth further research for anyone who likes steady income generation from their portfolio. As always, I urge potential investors to try and get a good understanding of the underlying business and its fundamentals before deciding on an investment. Another aspect to consider for GOG is how much it’s actually worth. Can you buy GOG for a great price? Dig deeper in our latest free analysis to find out!

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.