Nippon Paint Holdings Co., Ltd. (TSE:4612) will pay a dividend of ¥8.00 on the 28th of March. This means the annual payment will be 1.4% of the current stock price, which is lower than the industry average.
View our latest analysis for Nippon Paint Holdings
The dividend yield is a little bit low, but sustainability of the payments is also an important part of evaluating an income stock. However, prior to this announcement, Nippon Paint Holdings' 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 7.5%. If the dividend continues along recent trends, we estimate the payout ratio will be 29%, which is in the range that makes us comfortable with the sustainability of the dividend.
Although the company has a long dividend history, it has been cut at least once in the last 10 years. The dividend has gone from an annual total of ¥3.20 in 2014 to the most recent total annual payment of ¥15.00. This works out to be a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 17% a year over that time. Nippon Paint Holdings has grown distributions at a rapid rate despite cutting the dividend at least once in the past. Companies that cut once often cut again, so we would be cautious about buying this stock solely for the dividend income.
Given that the dividend has been cut in the past, we need to check if earnings are growing and if that might lead to stronger dividends in the future. Nippon Paint Holdings has seen EPS rising for the last five years, at 12% per annum. With a decent amount of growth and a low payout ratio, we think this bodes well for Nippon Paint Holdings' prospects of growing its dividend payments in the future.
Overall, we think that this is a great income investment, and we think that maintaining the dividend this year may have been a conservative choice. Earnings are easily covering distributions, and the company is generating plenty of cash. All of these factors considered, we think this has solid potential as a dividend stock.
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. Companies that are growing earnings tend to be the best dividend stocks over the long term. See what the 11 analysts we track are forecasting for Nippon Paint Holdings for free with public analyst estimates for the company. 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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