In This Article:
It looks like Premium Brands Holdings Corporation (TSE:PBH) is about to go ex-dividend in the next 2 days. You will need to purchase shares before the 30th of December to receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 15th of January.
Premium Brands Holdings's next dividend payment will be CA$0.58 per share. Last year, in total, the company distributed CA$2.31 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Premium Brands Holdings stock has a trailing yield of around 2.3% on the current share price of CA$102.17. We love seeing companies pay a dividend, but it's also important to be sure that laying the golden eggs isn't going to kill our golden goose! So we need to check whether the dividend payments are covered, and if earnings are growing.
See our latest analysis for Premium Brands Holdings
If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Premium Brands Holdings paid out 111% of profit in the past year, which we think is typically not sustainable unless there are mitigating characteristics such as unusually strong cash flow or a large cash balance. Yet cash flow is typically more important than profit for assessing dividend sustainability, so we should always check if the company generated enough cash to afford its dividend. Over the last year it paid out 60% of its free cash flow as dividends, within the usual range for most companies.
It's good to see that while Premium Brands Holdings's dividends were not covered by profits, at least they are affordable from a cash perspective. If executives were to continue paying more in dividends than the company reported in profits, we'd view this as a warning sign. Very few companies are able to sustainably pay dividends larger than their reported earnings.
Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Businesses with strong growth prospects usually make the best dividend payers, because it's easier to grow dividends when earnings per share are improving. If business enters a downturn and the dividend is cut, the company could see its value fall precipitously. It's encouraging to see Premium Brands Holdings has grown its earnings rapidly, up 29% a year for the past five years.
The main way most investors will assess a company's dividend prospects is by checking the historical rate of dividend growth. Since the start of our data, 10 years ago, Premium Brands Holdings has lifted its dividend by approximately 7.0% a year on average. It's encouraging to see the company lifting dividends while earnings are growing, suggesting at least some corporate interest in rewarding shareholders.