Something To Consider Before Buying EdiliziAcrobatica S.p.A. (BIT:EDAC) For The 3.3% Dividend

Today we'll take a closer look at EdiliziAcrobatica S.p.A. (BIT:EDAC) 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 popular dividend stock because of its yield, and then lose money if the company's dividend doesn't live up to expectations.

EdiliziAcrobatica has only been paying a dividend for a year or so, so investors might be curious about its 3.3% yield. There are a few simple ways to reduce the risks of buying EdiliziAcrobatica 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. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. Looking at the data, we can see that 398% of EdiliziAcrobatica's profits were paid out as dividends in the last 12 months. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, from the perspective of an investor who hopes to own the company for many years, a payout ratio of above 100% is definitely a concern.

Remember, you can always get a snapshot of EdiliziAcrobatica'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. With a payment history of less than 2 years, we think it's a bit too soon to think about living on the income from its dividend. Its most recent annual dividend was €0.2 per share.

Modest dividend growth is good to see, especially with the payments being relatively stable. However, the payment history is relatively short and we wouldn't want to rely on this dividend too much.

Dividend Growth Potential

The other half of the dividend investing equation is evaluating whether earnings per share (EPS) are growing. Over the long term, dividends need to grow at or above the rate of inflation, in order to maintain the recipient's purchasing power. EdiliziAcrobatica's EPS have fallen by approximately 79% per year during 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

To summarise, shareholders should always check that EdiliziAcrobatica's dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. EdiliziAcrobatica is paying out a larger percentage of its profit than we're comfortable with. Earnings per share are down, and to our mind EdiliziAcrobatica has not been paying a dividend long enough to demonstrate its resilience across economic cycles. Using these criteria, EdiliziAcrobatica looks suboptimal from a dividend investment perspective.

Investors generally tend to favour companies with a consistent, stable dividend policy as opposed to those operating an irregular one. However, there are other things to consider for investors when analysing stock performance. As an example, we've identified 5 warning signs for EdiliziAcrobatica that you should be aware of before investing.

If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%.

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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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