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Some investors rely on dividends for growing their wealth, and if you're one of those dividend sleuths, you might be intrigued to know that The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE) is about to go ex-dividend in just 4 days. You can purchase shares before the 10th of October in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 25th of October.
Buckle's next dividend payment will be US$0.3 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$2.0 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Buckle stock has a trailing yield of around 10.0% on the current share price of $20.08. 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 Buckle has been able to grow its dividends, or if the dividend might be cut.
Check out our latest analysis for Buckle
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. Buckle paid out more than half (52%) of its earnings last year, which is a regular payout ratio for most companies. 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. It distributed 47% of its free cash flow as dividends, a comfortable payout level for most companies.
It's positive to see that Buckle's dividend is covered by both profits and cash flow, since this is generally a sign that the dividend is sustainable, and a lower payout ratio usually suggests a greater margin of safety before the dividend gets cut.
Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Businesses with shrinking earnings are tricky from a dividend perspective. If earnings fall far enough, the company could be forced to cut its dividend. With that in mind, we're discomforted by Buckle's 11% per annum decline in earnings in the past five years. Such a sharp decline casts doubt on the future sustainability of the dividend.
The main way most investors will assess a company's dividend prospects is by checking the historical rate of dividend growth. In the past ten years, Buckle has increased its dividend at approximately 9.6% a year on average. Growing the dividend payout ratio while earnings are declining can deliver nice returns for a while, but it's always worth checking for when the company can't increase the payout ratio any more - because then the music stops.