Ferrexpo plc (LON:FXPO) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next three days. You can purchase shares before the 13th of August in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 26th of August.

Ferrexpo's next dividend payment will be UK£0.066 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of UK£0.20 to shareholders. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that Ferrexpo has a trailing yield of 7.9% on the current share price of £1.924. 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 Ferrexpo

If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Ferrexpo is paying out just 15% of its profit after tax, which is comfortably low and leaves plenty of breathing room in the case of adverse events. That said, even highly profitable companies sometimes might not generate enough cash to pay the dividend, which is why we should always check if the dividend is covered by cash flow. It distributed 31% of its free cash flow as dividends, a comfortable payout level for most companies.

It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously.

Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Companies with consistently growing earnings per share generally make the best dividend stocks, as they usually find it easier to grow dividends per share. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. Fortunately for readers, Ferrexpo's earnings per share have been growing at 16% a year for the past five years. Earnings per share have been growing rapidly and the company is retaining a majority of its earnings within the business. This will make it easier to fund future growth efforts and we think this is an attractive combination - plus the dividend can always be increased later.

Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. In the last 10 years, Ferrexpo has lifted its dividend by approximately 12% a year on average. It's great to see earnings per share growing rapidly over several years, and dividends per share growing right along with it.