Important news for shareholders and potential investors in The First of Long Island Corporation (NASDAQ:FLIC): The dividend payment of $0.15 per share will be distributed into shareholder on 04 April 2018, and the stock will begin trading ex-dividend at an earlier date, 15 March 2018. Investors looking for higher income-generating stocks to add to their portfolio should keep reading, as I take a deeper dive into First of Long Island’s latest financial data to analyse its dividend attributes. See our latest analysis for First of Long Island

Here’s how I find good dividend stocks

Whenever I am looking at a potential dividend stock investment, I always check these five metrics:

• Does it pay an annual yield higher than 75% of dividend payers?

• Has it paid dividend every year without dramatically reducing payout in the past?

• Has dividend per share risen in the past couple of years?

• Is its earnings sufficient to payout dividend at the current rate?

• Will it be able to continue to payout at the current rate in the future?

How well does First of Long Island fit our criteria?

First of Long Island has a trailing twelve-month payout ratio of 40.14%, meaning the dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. In the near future, analysts are predicting lower payout ratio of 32.63%, leading to a dividend yield of 2.09%. However, EPS should increase to $1.76, meaning that the lower payout ratio does not necessarily implicate a lower dividend payment. If there’s one type of stock you want to be reliable, it’s dividend stocks and their stable income-generating ability. In the case of FLIC it has increased its DPS from $0.27 to $0.6 in the past 10 years. It has also been paying out dividend consistently during this time, as you’d expect for a company increasing its dividend levels. These are all positive signs of a great, reliable dividend stock. Compared to its peers, First of Long Island produces a yield of 2.04%, which is on the low-side for Banks stocks.

Next Steps:

Keeping in mind the dividend characteristics above, First of Long Island is definitely worth considering for investors looking to build a dedicated income portfolio. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, I recommend taking sufficient time to understand its core business and determine whether the company and its investment properties suit your overall goals. There are three fundamental factors you should further research:

1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for FLIC’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for FLIC’s outlook.

2. Valuation: What is FLIC worth today? Even if the stock is a cash cow, it’s not worth an infinite price. The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether FLIC is currently mispriced by the market.

3. Other Dividend Rockstars: Are there better dividend payers with stronger fundamentals out there? Check out our free list of these great stocks here.

To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.