Attention dividend hunters! Greenland Hong Kong Holdings Limited (SEHK:337) will be distributing its dividend of CN¥0.15 per share on the 21 June 2018, and will start trading ex-dividend in 5 days time on the 25 May 2018. Is this future income stream a compelling catalyst for dividend investors to think about the stock as an investment today? Let’s take a look at Greenland Hong Kong Holdings’s most recent financial data to examine its dividend characteristics in more detail. See our latest analysis for Greenland Hong Kong Holdings

How I analyze a dividend stock

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

• Is it the top 25% annual dividend yield payer?

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

• Has it increased its dividend per share amount over the past?

• Does earnings amply cover its dividend payments?

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

Does Greenland Hong Kong Holdings pass our checks?

The company currently pays out 27.18% of its earnings as a dividend, according to its trailing twelve-month data, which means that the dividend is covered by earnings. Going forward, analysts expect 337’s payout to increase to 32.39% of its earnings, which leads to a dividend yield of around 7.31%. In addition to this, EPS should increase to CN¥0.62. The higher payout forecasted, along with higher earnings, should lead to greater dividend income for investors moving forward. If there is one thing that you want to be reliable in your life, it’s dividend stocks and their constant income stream. Dividend payments from Greenland Hong Kong Holdings have been volatile in the past 10 years, with some years experiencing significant drops of over 25%. This means that dividend hunters should probably steer clear of the stock, at least for now until the track record improves. Relative to peers, Greenland Hong Kong Holdings produces a yield of 3.85%, which is high for Real Estate stocks but still below the market’s top dividend payers.

Next Steps:

If Greenland Hong Kong Holdings is in your portfolio for cash-generating reasons, there may be better alternatives out there. However, if you are not strictly just a dividend investor, the stock could still offer some interesting investment opportunities. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, I urge potential investors to try and get a good understanding of the underlying business and its fundamentals before deciding on an investment. There are three relevant aspects you should further examine: