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The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next four days. The ex-dividend date occurs one day before the record date which is the day on which shareholders need to be on the company's books in order to receive a dividend. It is important to be aware of the ex-dividend date because any trade on the stock needs to have been settled on or before the record date. Meaning, you will need to purchase Coca-Cola's shares before the 30th of November to receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 15th of December.
The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.46 per share, and in the last 12 months, the company paid a total of US$1.84 per share. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that Coca-Cola has a trailing yield of 3.1% on the current share price of $58.57. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Coca-Cola's dividend is reliable and sustainable. So we need to check whether the dividend payments are covered, and if earnings are growing.
See our latest analysis for Coca-Cola
If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Coca-Cola is paying out an acceptable 73% of its profit, a common payout level among most companies. Yet cash flows are even more important than profits for assessing a dividend, so we need to see if the company generated enough cash to pay its distribution. It paid out 77% of its free cash flow as dividends, which is within usual limits but will limit the company's ability to lift the dividend if there's no growth.
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 with consistently growing earnings per share generally make the best dividend stocks, as they usually find it easier to grow dividends per share. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. It's encouraging to see Coca-Cola has grown its earnings rapidly, up 54% a year for the past five years.
Another key way to measure a company's dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. In the past 10 years, Coca-Cola has increased its dividend at approximately 5.1% a year on average. It's good to see both earnings and the dividend have improved - although the former has been rising much quicker than the latter, possibly due to the company reinvesting more of its profits in growth.