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Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX) stock is about to trade ex-dividend in 2 days. The ex-dividend date is one business day before the record date, which is the cut-off date for shareholders to be present on the company's books to be eligible for a dividend payment. The ex-dividend date is important because any transaction on a stock needs to have been settled before the record date in order to be eligible for a dividend. Thus, you can purchase Blackstone's shares before the 28th of April in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 5th of May.
The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.93 per share. Last year, in total, the company distributed US$3.95 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Blackstone has a trailing yield of 2.9% on the current stock price of US$134.55. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Blackstone's dividend is reliable and sustainable. As a result, readers should always check whether Blackstone has been able to grow its dividends, or if the dividend might be cut.
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. Blackstone distributed an unsustainably high 122% of its profit as dividends to shareholders last year. Without extenuating circumstances, we'd consider the dividend at risk of a cut.
When a company pays out a dividend that is not well covered by profits, the dividend is generally seen as more vulnerable to being cut.
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Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Stocks with flat earnings can still be attractive dividend payers, but it is important to be more conservative with your approach and demand a greater margin for safety when it comes to dividend sustainability. If earnings decline and the company is forced to cut its dividend, investors could watch the value of their investment go up in smoke. With that in mind, we're not enthused to see that Blackstone's earnings per share have remained effectively flat over the past five years. Better than seeing them fall off a cliff, for sure, but the best dividend stocks grow their earnings meaningfully over the long run.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. Blackstone has delivered 6.4% dividend growth per year on average over the past 10 years.