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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 CITIC Limited (HKG:267) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 3 days. You will need to purchase shares before the 13th of September to receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 4th of October.
CITIC's next dividend payment will be HK$0.18 per share, and in the last 12 months, the company paid a total of HK$0.44 per share. Last year's total dividend payments show that CITIC has a trailing yield of 4.5% on the current share price of HK$9.7. Dividends are a major contributor to investment returns for long term holders, but only if the dividend continues to be paid. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.
Check out our latest analysis for CITIC
Dividends are typically paid out of company income, so if a company pays out more than it earned, its dividend is usually at a higher risk of being cut. CITIC is paying out just 24% of its profit after tax, which is comfortably low and leaves plenty of breathing room in the case of adverse events. A useful secondary check can be to evaluate whether CITIC generated enough free cash flow to afford its dividend. Luckily it paid out just 9.1% of its free cash flow last year.
It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously.
Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Companies that aren't growing their earnings can still be valuable, but it is even more important to assess the sustainability of the dividend if it looks like the company will struggle to grow. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. With that in mind, we're not enthused to see that CITIC's earnings per share have remained effectively flat over the past five years. We'd take that over an earnings decline any day, but in the long run, the best dividend stocks all grow their earnings per share.
Another key way to measure a company's dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. In the last 10 years, CITIC has lifted its dividend by approximately 3.9% a year on average.
The Bottom Line
Is CITIC worth buying for its dividend? Earnings per share have been flat, although at least the company is paying out a low and conservative percentage of both its earnings and cash flow. It's definitely not great to see earnings falling, but at least there may be some buffer before the dividend gets cut. Overall, it's not a bad combination, but we feel that there are likely more attractive dividend prospects out there.