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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 Toll Brothers, Inc. (NYSE:TOL) is about to go ex-dividend in just four days. If you purchase the stock on or after the 7th of January, you won't be eligible to receive this dividend, when it is paid on the 22nd of January.
Toll Brothers's next dividend payment will be US$0.11 per share, and in the last 12 months, the company paid a total of US$0.44 per share. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Toll Brothers has a trailing yield of 1.0% on the current stock price of $43.47. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Toll Brothers's dividend is reliable and sustainable. So we need to investigate whether Toll Brothers can afford its dividend, and if the dividend could grow.
Check out our latest analysis for Toll Brothers
If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Toll Brothers has a low and conservative payout ratio of just 13% of its income after tax. A useful secondary check can be to evaluate whether Toll Brothers generated enough free cash flow to afford its dividend. What's good is that dividends were well covered by free cash flow, with the company paying out 6.3% of its cash flow last year.
It's positive to see that Toll Brothers'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?
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 fall far enough, the company could be forced to cut its dividend. For this reason, we're glad to see Toll Brothers's earnings per share have risen 11% per annum over the last five years. Earnings per share are growing rapidly and the company is keeping more than half of its earnings within the business; an attractive combination which could suggest the company is focused on reinvesting to grow earnings further. Fast-growing businesses that are reinvesting heavily are enticing from a dividend perspective, especially since they can often increase the payout ratio later.