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Regular readers will know that we love our dividends at Simply Wall St, which is why it's exciting to see Alico, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALCO) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next four days. This means that investors who purchase shares on or after the 23rd of December will not receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 8th of January.
Alico's next dividend payment will be US$0.18 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$0.36 to shareholders. Last year's total dividend payments show that Alico has a trailing yield of 2.3% on the current share price of $31.5. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Alico'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 Alico
If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Alico paid out just 11% of its profit last year, which we think is conservatively low and leaves plenty of margin for unexpected circumstances. That said, even highly profitable companies sometimes might not generate enough cash to pay the dividend, which is why we should always check if the dividend is covered by cash flow. Alico paid a dividend despite reporting negative free cash flow over the last twelve months. This may be due to heavy investment in the business, but this is still suboptimal from a dividend sustainability perspective.
Click here to see how much of its profit Alico paid out over the last 12 months.
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. For this reason, we're glad to see Alico's earnings per share have risen 14% per annum over the last five years.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. Alico has delivered 6.1% dividend growth per year on average over the past 10 years. We're glad to see dividends rising alongside earnings over a number of years, which may be a sign the company intends to share the growth with shareholders.
To Sum It Up
From a dividend perspective, should investors buy or avoid Alico? We like that Alico has been successfully growing its earnings per share at a nice rate and reinvesting most of its profits in the business. However, we note the high cashflow payout ratio with some concern. Overall, it's not a bad combination, but we feel that there are likely more attractive dividend prospects out there.