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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 Sinopec Kantons Holdings Limited (HKG:934) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 3 days. If you purchase the stock on or after the 12th of September, you won't be eligible to receive this dividend, when it is paid on the 18th of October.
Sinopec Kantons Holdings's next dividend payment will be HK$0.08 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of HK$0.18 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Sinopec Kantons Holdings has a trailing yield of 5.7% on the current stock price of HK$3.14. We love seeing companies pay a dividend, but it's also important to be sure that laying the golden eggs isn't going to kill our golden goose! We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.
See our latest analysis for Sinopec Kantons Holdings
If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Sinopec Kantons Holdings paid out a comfortable 36% of its profit last year. Yet cash flow is typically more important than profit for assessing dividend sustainability, so we should always check if the company generated enough cash to afford its dividend. Luckily it paid out just 24% of its free cash flow last year.
It's positive to see that Sinopec Kantons Holdings'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?
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. Fortunately for readers, Sinopec Kantons Holdings's earnings per share have been growing at 19% 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. Fast-growing businesses that are reinvesting heavily are enticing from a dividend perspective, especially since they can often increase the payout ratio later.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. Sinopec Kantons Holdings has delivered an average of 18% per year annual increase in its dividend, based on the past 10 years of dividend payments. It's exciting to see that both earnings and dividends per share have grown rapidly over the past few years.