Three Days Left Until Schindler Holding AG (VTX:SCHN) Trades Ex-Dividend

It looks like Schindler Holding AG (VTX:SCHN) is about to go ex-dividend in the next three days. You can purchase shares before the 25th of March in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 29th of March.

Schindler Holding's next dividend payment will be CHF4.00 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of CHF4.00 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Schindler Holding stock has a trailing yield of around 1.5% on the current share price of CHF259.8. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Schindler Holding's dividend is reliable and sustainable. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.

Check out our latest analysis for Schindler Holding

If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Schindler Holding paid out 60% of its earnings to investors last year, a normal payout level for most businesses. Yet cash flow is typically more important than profit for assessing dividend sustainability, so we should always check if the company generated enough cash to afford its dividend. It distributed 30% of its free cash flow as dividends, a comfortable payout level for most companies.

It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously.

Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Companies that aren't growing their earnings can still be valuable, but it is even more important to assess the sustainability of the dividend if it looks like the company will struggle to grow. If business enters a downturn and the dividend is cut, the company could see its value fall precipitously. It's not encouraging to see that Schindler Holding's earnings are effectively flat over the past five years. We'd take that over an earnings decline any day, but in the long run, the best dividend stocks all grow their earnings per share. Earnings per share growth has been slim, and the company is already paying out a majority of its earnings. While there is some room to both increase the payout ratio and reinvest in the business, generally the higher a payout ratio goes, the lower a company's prospects for future growth.

The main way most investors will assess a company's dividend prospects is by checking the historical rate of dividend growth. In the past 10 years, Schindler Holding has increased its dividend at approximately 7.2% a year on average.

The Bottom Line

Is Schindler Holding worth buying for its dividend? Earnings per share have been flat and Schindler Holding's dividend payouts are within reasonable limits; without a sharp decline in earnings we feel that the dividend is likely somewhat sustainable. Overall, it's not a bad combination, but we feel that there are likely more attractive dividend prospects out there.

Ever wonder what the future holds for Schindler Holding? See what the 20 analysts we track are forecasting, with this visualisation of its historical and future estimated earnings and cash flow

If you're in the market for dividend stocks, we recommend checking our list of top dividend stocks with a greater than 2% yield and an upcoming dividend.

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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. 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.
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