Some investors rely on dividends for growing their wealth, and if you're one of those dividend sleuths, you might be intrigued to know that Falcon Minerals Corporation (NASDAQ:FLMN) is about to go ex-dividend in just 4 days. Ex-dividend means that investors that purchase the stock on or after the 23rd of August will not receive this dividend, which will be paid on the 6th of September.
Falcon Minerals's next dividend payment will be US$0.15 per share. Last year, in total, the company distributed US$0.60 to shareholders. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that Falcon Minerals has a trailing yield of 9.5% on the current share price of $6.3. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.
See our latest analysis for Falcon Minerals
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. Falcon Minerals paid a dividend last year despite being unprofitable. This might be a one-off event, but it's not a sustainable state of affairs in the long run. Considering the lack of profitability, we also need to check if the company generated enough cash flow to cover the dividend payment. If Falcon Minerals didn't generate enough cash to pay the dividend, then it must have either paid from cash in the bank or by borrowing money, neither of which is sustainable in the long term. Falcon Minerals paid out more free cash flow than it generated - 113%, to be precise - last year, which we think is concerningly high. It's hard to consistently pay out more cash than you generate without either borrowing or using company cash, so we'd wonder how the company justifies this payout level.
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. If earnings decline and the company is forced to cut its dividend, investors could watch the value of their investment go up in smoke. Falcon Minerals was unprofitable last year, and sadly its loss per share worsened by 144% on the previous year.
Given that Falcon Minerals has only been paying a dividend for a year, there's not much of a past history to draw insight from.