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TriCo Bancshares (NASDAQ:TCBK) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next four days. Typically, the ex-dividend date is one business day before the record date which is the date on which a company determines the shareholders eligible to receive a dividend. The ex-dividend date is of consequence because whenever a stock is bought or sold, the trade takes at least two business day to settle. Thus, you can purchase TriCo Bancshares' shares before the 8th of December in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 23rd of December.
The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.30 per share, and in the last 12 months, the company paid a total of US$1.20 per share. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that TriCo Bancshares has a trailing yield of 2.2% on the current share price of $53.41. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether TriCo Bancshares's dividend is reliable and sustainable. That's why we should always check whether the dividend payments appear sustainable, and if the company is growing.
Check out our latest analysis for TriCo Bancshares
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. That's why it's good to see TriCo Bancshares paying out a modest 28% of its earnings.
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?
Companies with consistently growing earnings per share generally make the best dividend stocks, as they usually find it easier to grow dividends per share. If earnings decline and the company is forced to cut its dividend, investors could watch the value of their investment go up in smoke. Fortunately for readers, TriCo Bancshares's earnings per share have been growing at 12% 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. TriCo Bancshares has delivered 13% dividend growth per year on average over the past 10 years. Both per-share earnings and dividends have both been growing rapidly in recent times, which is great to see.
To Sum It Up
Has TriCo Bancshares got what it takes to maintain its dividend payments? When companies are growing rapidly and retaining a majority of the profits within the business, it's usually a sign that reinvesting earnings creates more value than paying dividends to shareholders. Perhaps even more importantly - this can sometimes signal management is focused on the long term future of the business. Overall, TriCo Bancshares looks like a promising dividend stock in this analysis, and we think it would be worth investigating further.