Should You Buy Compagnie du Cambodge (EPA:CBDG) For Its Dividend?

Today we'll take a closer look at Compagnie du Cambodge (EPA:CBDG) from a dividend investor's perspective. Owning a strong business and reinvesting the dividends is widely seen as an attractive way of growing your wealth. Yet sometimes, investors buy a stock for its dividend and lose money because the share price falls by more than they earned in dividend payments.

With Compagnie du Cambodge yielding 3.6% and having paid a dividend for over 10 years, many investors likely find the company quite interesting. We'd guess that plenty of investors have purchased it for the income. There are a few simple ways to reduce the risks of buying Compagnie du Cambodge for its dividend, and we'll go through these below.

Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis

Payout ratios

Dividends are typically paid from company earnings. If a company pays more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. So we need to form a view on if a company's dividend is sustainable, relative to its net profit after tax. Although it reported a loss over the past 12 months, Compagnie du Cambodge currently pays a dividend. When a company is loss-making, we next need to check to see if its cash flows can support the dividend.

Compagnie du Cambodge paid out 705% of its free cash flow last year, suggesting the dividend is poorly covered by cash flow. Paying out more than 100% of your free cash flow in dividends is generally not a long-term, sustainable state of affairs, so we think shareholders should watch this metric closely.

While the above analysis focuses on dividends relative to a company's earnings, we do note Compagnie du Cambodge's strong net cash position, which will let it pay larger dividends for a time, should it choose.

Remember, you can always get a snapshot of Compagnie du Cambodge's latest financial position, by checking our visualisation of its financial health.

Dividend Volatility

One of the major risks of relying on dividend income, is the potential for a company to struggle financially and cut its dividend. Not only is your income cut, but the value of your investment declines as well - nasty. Compagnie du Cambodge has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. Its dividend payments have declined on at least one occasion over the past 10 years. During the past 10-year period, the first annual payment was €100 in 2010, compared to €180 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 6.1% per year over this time. Compagnie du Cambodge's dividend payments have fluctuated, so it hasn't grown 6.1% every year, but the CAGR is a useful rule of thumb for approximating the historical growth.

Dividends have grown at a reasonable rate, but with at least one substantial cut in the payments, we're not certain this dividend stock would be ideal for someone intending to live on the income.

Dividend Growth Potential

With a relatively unstable dividend, it's even more important to evaluate if earnings per share (EPS) are growing - it's not worth taking the risk on a dividend getting cut, unless you might be rewarded with larger dividends in future. Compagnie du Cambodge's earnings per share have shrunk at 30% a year over the past five years. A sharp decline in earnings per share is not great from from a dividend perspective, as even conservative payout ratios can come under pressure if earnings fall far enough.

Conclusion

When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. It's a concern to see that the company paid a dividend despite reporting a loss, and the dividend was also not well covered by free cash flow. Earnings per share are down, and Compagnie du Cambodge's dividend has been cut at least once in the past, which is disappointing. Using these criteria, Compagnie du Cambodge looks quite suboptimal from a dividend investment perspective.

Market movements attest to how highly valued a consistent dividend policy is compared to one which is more unpredictable. At the same time, there are other factors our readers should be conscious of before pouring capital into a stock. Just as an example, we've come accross 2 warning signs for Compagnie du Cambodge you should be aware of, and 1 of them is a bit concerning.

We have also put together a list of global stocks with a market capitalisation above $1bn and yielding more 3%.

If you’re looking to trade Compagnie du Cambodge, open an account with the lowest-cost* platform trusted by professionals, Interactive Brokers. Their clients from over 200 countries and territories trade stocks, options, futures, forex, bonds and funds worldwide from a single integrated account. Promoted

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.
^*Interactive Brokers Rated Lowest Cost Broker by StockBrokers.com Annual Online Review 2020

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com.