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Investors who want to cash in on Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited’s (SGX:O39) upcoming dividend of S$0.20 per share have only 2 days left to buy the shares before its ex-dividend date, 15 August 2018, in time for dividends payable on the 08 October 2018. Investors looking for higher income-generating stocks to add to their portfolio should keep reading, as I take a deeper dive into Oversea-Chinese Banking’s latest financial data to analyse its dividend attributes.

Check out our latest analysis for Oversea-Chinese Banking

Here’s how I find good dividend stocks

If you are a dividend investor, you should always assess these five key metrics:

• Is it paying an annual yield above 75% of dividend payers?

• Has it consistently paid a stable dividend without missing a payment or drastically cutting payout?

• Has dividend per share amount increased over the past?

• Does earnings amply cover its dividend payments?

• Will it have the ability to keep paying its dividends going forward?

Does Oversea-Chinese Banking pass our checks?

Oversea-Chinese Banking has a trailing twelve-month payout ratio of 36.09%, which means that the dividend is covered by earnings. Going forward, analysts expect O39’s payout to remain around the same level at 37.76% of its earnings, which leads to a dividend yield of around 3.86%. Moreover, EPS should increase to SGD1.16.

If there is one thing that you want to be reliable in your life, it’s dividend stocks and their constant income stream. In the case of O39 it has increased its DPS from SGD0.28 to SGD0.40 in the past 10 years. During this period it has not missed a payment, as one would expect for a company increasing its dividend. This is an impressive feat, which makes O39 a true dividend rockstar.

Relative to peers, Oversea-Chinese Banking has a yield of 3.39%, which is on the low-side for Banks stocks.

Next Steps:

With these dividend metrics in mind, I definitely rank Oversea-Chinese Banking as a strong income stock, and is worth further research for anyone who considers dividends an important part of their portfolio strategy. 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 pertinent aspects you should further examine:

1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for O39’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for O39’s outlook.

2. Valuation: What is O39 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 O39 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 past 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. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.