Vesuvius plc (LON:VSVS) will increase its dividend on the 31st of May to £0.1575, which is 5.0% higher than last year's payment from the same period of £0.15. This will take the dividend yield to an attractive 5.1%, providing a nice boost to shareholder returns.

View our latest analysis for Vesuvius

Vesuvius' Earnings Easily Cover The Distributions

A big dividend yield for a few years doesn't mean much if it can't be sustained. However, prior to this announcement, Vesuvius' dividend was comfortably covered by both cash flow and earnings. As a result, a large proportion of what it earned was being reinvested back into the business.

Looking forward, earnings per share is forecast to fall by 19.6% over the next year. If the dividend continues along recent trends, we estimate the payout ratio could be 42%, which we consider to be quite comfortable, with most of the company's earnings left over to grow the business in the future.

Dividend Volatility

While the company has been paying a dividend for a long time, it has cut the dividend at least once in the last 10 years. Since 2013, the annual payment back then was £0.218, compared to the most recent full-year payment of £0.223. Dividend payments have been growing, but very slowly over the period. We're glad to see the dividend has risen, but with a limited rate of growth and fluctuations in the payments the total shareholder return may be limited.

The Dividend Looks Likely To Grow

With a relatively unstable dividend, it's even more important to evaluate if earnings per share is growing, which could point to a growing dividend in the future. We are encouraged to see that Vesuvius has grown earnings per share at 38% per year over the past five years. A low payout ratio gives the company a lot of flexibility, and growing earnings also make it very easy for it to grow the dividend.

Vesuvius Looks Like A Great Dividend Stock

Overall, a dividend increase is always good, and we think that Vesuvius is a strong income stock thanks to its track record and growing earnings. The distributions are easily covered by earnings, and there is plenty of cash being generated as well. If earnings do fall over the next 12 months, the dividend could be buffeted a little bit, but we don't think it should cause too much of a problem in the long term. All in all, this checks a lot of the boxes we look for when choosing an income stock.

Companies possessing a stable dividend policy will likely enjoy greater investor interest than those suffering from a more inconsistent approach. Still, investors need to consider a host of other factors, apart from dividend payments, when analysing a company. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for Vesuvius (of which 1 is potentially serious!) you should know about. Looking for more high-yielding dividend ideas? Try our collection of strong dividend payers.