Enerflex (TSE:EFX) Has Announced A Dividend Of CA$0.025

Enerflex Ltd. (TSE:EFX) has announced that it will pay a dividend of CA$0.025 per share on the 6th of July. This means the annual payment will be 1.2% of the current stock price, which is lower than the industry average.

Check out our latest analysis for Enerflex

Enerflex Might Find It Hard To Continue The Dividend

The dividend yield is a little bit low, but sustainability of the payments is also an important part of evaluating an income stock. Even though Enerflex is not generating a profit, it is still paying a dividend. It is also not generating any free cash flow, we definitely have concerns when it comes to the sustainability of the dividend.

Looking forward, earnings per share is forecast to rise by 53.6% over the next year. The company seems to be going down the right path, but it will take a little bit longer than a year to cross over into profitability. Unless this happens fairly soon, the dividend could start to come under pressure.

Dividend Volatility

The company's dividend history has been marked by instability, with at least one cut in the last 10 years. The dividend has gone from an annual total of CA$0.24 in 2013 to the most recent total annual payment of CA$0.10. Doing the maths, this is a decline of about 8.4% per year. Generally, we don't like to see a dividend that has been declining over time as this can degrade shareholders' returns and indicate that the company may be running into problems.

The Dividend Has Limited Growth Potential

With a relatively unstable dividend, and a poor history of shrinking dividends, it's even more important to see if EPS is growing. Enerflex's EPS has fallen by approximately 46% per year during the past five years. This steep decline can indicate that the business is going through a tough time, which could constrain its ability to pay a larger dividend each year in the future. Over the next year, however, earnings are actually predicted to rise, but we would still be cautious until a track record of earnings growth can be built.

We should note that Enerflex has issued stock equal to 38% of shares outstanding. Regularly doing this can be detrimental - it's hard to grow dividends per share when new shares are regularly being created.

Enerflex's Dividend Doesn't Look Great

Overall, this isn't a great candidate as an income investment, even though the dividend was stable this year. The company seems to be stretching itself a bit to make such big payments, but it doesn't appear they can be consistent over time. Overall, the dividend is not reliable enough to make this a good income 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. Case in point: We've spotted 2 warning signs for Enerflex (of which 1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) you should know about. 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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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.