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OFG Bancorp (NYSE:OFG) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 3 days. If you purchase the stock on or after the 27th of September, you won't be eligible to receive this dividend, when it is paid on the 15th of October.
OFG Bancorp's next dividend payment will be US$0.07 per share. Last year, in total, the company distributed US$0.3 to shareholders. Last year's total dividend payments show that OFG Bancorp has a trailing yield of 1.2% on the current share price of $22.45. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. As a result, readers should always check whether OFG Bancorp has been able to grow its dividends, or if the dividend might be cut.
See our latest analysis for OFG Bancorp
Dividends are typically paid out of company income, so if a company pays out more than it earned, its dividend is usually at a higher risk of being cut. OFG Bancorp has a low and conservative payout ratio of just 15% of its income after tax.
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 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. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. It's not encouraging to see that OFG Bancorp's earnings are effectively flat over the past five years. We'd take that over an earnings decline any day, but in the long run, the best dividend stocks all grow their earnings per share.
Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. OFG Bancorp's dividend payments per share have declined at 6.7% per year on average over the past ten years, which is uninspiring.
To Sum It Up
From a dividend perspective, should investors buy or avoid OFG Bancorp? OFG Bancorp's earnings per share are basically flat over the past five years, although it has the cushion of a low payout ratio, which would suggest a cut to the dividend is relatively unlikely. We think there are likely better opportunities out there.