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CNO Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CNO) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 4 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 as the process of settlement involves two full business days. So if you miss that date, you would not show up on the company's books on the record date. In other words, investors can purchase CNO Financial Group's shares before the 8th of December in order to be eligible for the dividend, which will be paid on the 23rd of December.
The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.14 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$0.56 to shareholders. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that CNO Financial Group has a trailing yield of 2.4% on the current share price of $23.13. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether CNO Financial Group's dividend is reliable and sustainable. So we need to investigate whether CNO Financial Group can afford its dividend, and if the dividend could grow.
View our latest analysis for CNO Financial Group
Dividends are typically paid from company earnings. If a company pays more in dividends than it earned in profit, then the dividend could be unsustainable. CNO Financial Group paid out just 14% of its profit last year, which we think is conservatively low and leaves plenty of margin for unexpected circumstances.
When a company paid out less in dividends than it earned in profit, this generally suggests its dividend is affordable. The lower the % of its profit that it pays out, the greater the margin of safety for the dividend if the business enters a downturn.
Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Stocks in companies that generate sustainable earnings growth often make the best dividend prospects, as it is easier to lift the dividend when earnings are rising. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. Fortunately for readers, CNO Financial Group's earnings per share have been growing at 15% a year for the past five years.
Another key way to measure a company's dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. In the past 10 years, CNO Financial Group has increased its dividend at approximately 21% a year on average. It's great to see earnings per share growing rapidly over several years, and dividends per share growing right along with it.