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 Nine Entertainment Co. Holdings Limited (ASX:NEC) is about to go ex-dividend in just 3 days. Investors can purchase shares before the 5th of March in order to be eligible for this dividend, which will be paid on the 20th of April.
Nine Entertainment Holdings’s next dividend payment will be AU$0.05 per share, and in the last 12 months, the company paid a total of AU$0.10 per share. Looking at the last 12 months of distributions, Nine Entertainment Holdings has a trailing yield of approximately 6.3% on its current stock price of A$1.585. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. As a result, readers should always check whether Nine Entertainment Holdings has been able to grow its dividends, or if the dividend might be cut.
Check out our latest analysis for Nine Entertainment Holdings
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. Nine Entertainment Holdings distributed an unsustainably high 116% of its profit as dividends to shareholders last year. Without extenuating circumstances, we’d consider the dividend at risk of a cut. A useful secondary check can be to evaluate whether Nine Entertainment Holdings generated enough free cash flow to afford its dividend. It paid out 104% of its free cash flow in the form of dividends last year, which is outside the comfort zone for most businesses. Cash flows are usually much more volatile than earnings, so this could be a temporary effect – but we’d generally want look more closely here.
Cash is slightly more important than profit from a dividend perspective, but given Nine Entertainment Holdings’s payouts were not well covered by either earnings or cash flow, we would be concerned about the sustainability of this dividend.
Click here to see the company’s payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.
Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?
Businesses with strong growth prospects usually make the best dividend payers, because it’s easier to grow dividends when earnings per share are improving. If earnings decline and the company is forced to cut its dividend, investors could watch the value of their investment go up in smoke. It’s encouraging to see Nine Entertainment Holdings has grown its earnings rapidly, up 23% a year for the past five years. Earnings per share have been growing rapidly, but the company is paying out an uncomfortably high percentage of its earnings as dividends. Fast-growing businesses normally need to reinvest most of their earnings in order to maintain growth, so we’d suspect that either earnings growth will slow or the dividend may not be increased for a while.
Another key way to measure a company’s dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. In the last six years, Nine Entertainment Holdings has lifted its dividend by approximately 16% a year on average. Both per-share earnings and dividends have both been growing rapidly in recent times, which is great to see.
The Bottom Line
Is Nine Entertainment Holdings worth buying for its dividend? While it’s nice to see earnings per share growing, we’re curious about how Nine Entertainment Holdings intends to continue growing, or maintain the dividend in a downturn given that it’s paying out such a high percentage of its earnings and cashflow. It’s not an attractive combination from a dividend perspective, and we’re inclined to pass on this one for the time being.
Curious what other investors think of Nine Entertainment Holdings? See what analysts are forecasting, with this visualisation of its historical and future estimated earnings and cash flow.
A common investment mistake is buying the first interesting stock you see. Here you can find a list of promising dividend stocks with a greater than 2% yield and an upcoming dividend.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.
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