Regular readers will know that we love our dividends at Simply Wall St, which is why it's exciting to see CRH plc (ISE:CRG) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 3 days. You can purchase shares before the 12th of March in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 28th of April.
CRH's upcoming dividend is €0.63 a share, following on from the last 12 months, when the company distributed a total of €0.83 per share to shareholders. Last year's total dividend payments show that CRH has a trailing yield of 2.7% on the current share price of €30.46. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether CRH's dividend is reliable and sustainable. So we need to check whether the dividend payments are covered, and if earnings are growing.
Check out our latest analysis for CRH
Dividends are usually paid out of company profits, so if a company pays out more than it earned then its dividend is usually at greater risk of being cut. That's why it's good to see CRH paying out a modest 41% of its earnings. 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. It distributed 26% of its free cash flow as dividends, a comfortable payout level for most companies.
It's positive to see that CRH'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 decline and the company is forced to cut its dividend, investors could watch the value of their investment go up in smoke. That's why it's comforting to see CRH's earnings have been skyrocketing, up 21% per annum for the past five years. Earnings per share have been growing very quickly, and the company is paying out a relatively low percentage of its profit and cash flow. Companies with growing earnings and low payout ratios are often the best long-term dividend stocks, as the company can both grow its earnings and increase the percentage of earnings that it pays out, essentially multiplying the dividend.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. CRH has delivered an average of 1.9% per year annual increase in its dividend, based on the past ten years of dividend payments. Earnings per share have been growing much quicker than dividends, potentially because CRH is keeping back more of its profits to grow the business.