The board of Teikoku Sen-i Co., Ltd. (TSE:3302) has announced that it will be paying its dividend of ¥55.00 on the 31st of March, an increased payment from last year's comparable dividend. Although the dividend is now higher, the yield is only 1.6%, which is below the industry average.
It would be nice for the yield to be higher, but we should also check if higher levels of dividend payment would be sustainable. However, prior to this announcement, Teikoku Sen-i's 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.
Over the next year, EPS is forecast to expand by 25.7%. Assuming the dividend continues along recent trends, we think the payout ratio could be 31% by next year, which is in a pretty sustainable range.
Check out our latest analysis for Teikoku Sen-i
Even over a long history of paying dividends, the company's distributions have been remarkably stable. The dividend has gone from an annual total of ¥30.00 in 2015 to the most recent total annual payment of ¥55.00. This implies that the company grew its distributions at a yearly rate of about 6.2% over that duration. The growth of the dividend has been pretty reliable, so we think this can offer investors some nice additional income in their portfolio.
The company's investors will be pleased to have been receiving dividend income for some time. However, things aren't all that rosy. However, Teikoku Sen-i's EPS was effectively flat over the past five years, which could stop the company from paying more every year.
In summary, it's great to see that the company can raise the dividend and keep it in a sustainable range. With shrinking earnings, the company may see some issues maintaining the dividend even though they look pretty sustainable for now. This looks like it could be a good dividend stock going forward, but we would note that the payout ratio has been at higher levels in the past so it could happen again.
Investors generally tend to favour companies with a consistent, stable dividend policy as opposed to those operating an irregular one. At the same time, there are other factors our readers should be conscious of before pouring capital into a stock. You can also discover whether shareholders are aligned with insider interests by checking our visualisation of insider shareholdings and trades in Teikoku Sen-i stock. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of high yield dividend stocks.
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