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Have you been keeping an eye on China Mobile Limited’s (HKG:941) upcoming dividend of CN¥1.83 per share payable on the 27 September 2018? Then you only have 2 days left before the stock starts trading ex-dividend on the 30 August 2018. Investors looking for higher income-generating stocks to add to their portfolio should keep reading, as I examine China Mobile’s latest financial data to analyse its dividend characteristics.

Check out our latest analysis for China Mobile

Here’s how I find good dividend stocks

If you are a dividend investor, you should always assess these five key metrics:

• Is it paying an annual yield above 75% of dividend payers?

• Has it consistently paid a stable dividend without missing a payment or drastically cutting payout?

• Has it increased its dividend per share amount over the past?

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

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

Does China Mobile pass our checks?

The company currently pays out 50.0% of its earnings as a dividend, according to its trailing twelve-month data, meaning the dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. In the near future, analysts are predicting a payout ratio of 49.3%, leading to a dividend yield of 4.5%. Moreover, EPS is forecasted to fall to CN¥5.62 in the upcoming year.

If there is one thing that you want to be reliable in your life, it’s dividend stocks and their constant income stream. Whilst its per-share payments have increased during the past 10 years, there has been some hiccups. Investors have seen reductions in the dividend per share in the past, although, it has picked up again.

Relative to peers, China Mobile has a yield of 4.7%, which is high for Wireless Telecom stocks but still below the market’s top dividend payers.

Next Steps:

With these dividend metrics in mind, I definitely rank China Mobile as a strong income stock, and is worth further research for anyone who considers dividends an important part of their portfolio strategy. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, I recommend taking sufficient time to understand its core business and determine whether the company and its investment properties suit your overall goals. There are three important factors you should further examine:

1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for 941’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for 941’s outlook.

2. Valuation: What is 941 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 941 is currently mispriced by the market.

3. Other 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 past 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. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.