In This Article:
Regular readers will know that we love our dividends at Simply Wall St, which is why it's exciting to see OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 4 days. The ex-dividend date occurs one day before the record date which is the day on which shareholders need to be on the company's books in order to receive a dividend. The ex-dividend date is important as the process of settlement involves two full business days. So if you miss that date, you would not show up on the company's books on the record date. This means that investors who purchase OceanFirst Financial's shares on or after the 3rd of February will not receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 17th of February.
The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.20 per share. Last year, in total, the company distributed US$0.80 to shareholders. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that OceanFirst Financial has a trailing yield of 3.4% on the current share price of $23.33. Dividends are a major contributor to investment returns for long term holders, but only if the dividend continues to be paid. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.
View our latest analysis for OceanFirst Financial
If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Fortunately OceanFirst Financial's payout ratio is modest, at just 32% of profit.
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?
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. For this reason, we're glad to see OceanFirst Financial's earnings per share have risen 13% per annum over the last five years.
Another key way to measure a company's dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. In the past 10 years, OceanFirst Financial has increased its dividend at approximately 5.2% a year on average. Earnings per share have been growing much quicker than dividends, potentially because OceanFirst Financial is keeping back more of its profits to grow the business.