Are Dividend Investors Making A Mistake With Everlight Chemical Industrial Corporation (TPE:1711)?
Today we'll take a closer look at Everlight Chemical Industrial Corporation (TPE:1711) 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. If you are hoping to live on your dividends, it's important to be more stringent with your investments than the average punter. Regular readers know we like to apply the same approach to each dividend stock, and we hope you'll find our analysis useful.
A 2.0% yield is nothing to get excited about, but investors probably think the long payment history suggests Everlight Chemical Industrial has some staying power. There are a few simple ways to reduce the risks of buying Everlight Chemical Industrial for its dividend, and we'll go through these below.
Explore this interactive chart for our latest analysis on Everlight Chemical Industrial!
Payout ratios
Companies (usually) pay dividends out of their earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, the dividend might have to be cut. Comparing dividend payments to a company's net profit after tax is a simple way of reality-checking whether a dividend is sustainable. Everlight Chemical Industrial paid out 93% of its profit as dividends, over the trailing twelve month period. This is quite a high payout ratio that suggests the dividend is not well covered by earnings.
We also measure dividends paid against a company's levered free cash flow, to see if enough cash was generated to cover the dividend. Everlight Chemical Industrial's cash payout ratio last year was 14%, which is quite low and suggests that the dividend was thoroughly covered by cash flow. While the dividend was not well covered by profits, at least they were covered by free cash flow. Still, if the company continues paying out such a high percentage of its profits, the dividend could be at risk if business turns sour.
Remember, you can always get a snapshot of Everlight Chemical Industrial's latest financial position, by checking our visualisation of its financial health.
Dividend Volatility
Before buying a stock for its income, we want to see if the dividends have been stable in the past, and if the company has a track record of maintaining its dividend. For the purpose of this article, we only scrutinise the last decade of Everlight Chemical Industrial's dividend payments. The dividend has been cut on at least one occasion historically. During the past 10-year period, the first annual payment was NT$0.5 in 2011, compared to NT$0.3 last year. This works out to be a decline of approximately 5.0% per year over that time. Everlight Chemical Industrial's dividend has been cut sharply at least once, so it hasn't fallen by 5.0% every year, but this is a decent approximation of the long term change.
When a company's per-share dividend falls we question if this reflects poorly on either external business conditions, or the company's capital allocation decisions. Either way, we find it hard to get excited about a company with a declining dividend.
Dividend Growth Potential
Given that the dividend has been cut in the past, we need to check if earnings are growing and if that might lead to stronger dividends in the future. Over the past five years, it looks as though Everlight Chemical Industrial's EPS have declined at around 17% a year. With this kind of significant decline, we always wonder what has changed in the business. Dividends are about stability, and Everlight Chemical Industrial's earnings per share, which support the dividend, have been anything but stable.
Conclusion
To summarise, shareholders should always check that Everlight Chemical Industrial's dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. We're not keen on the fact that Everlight Chemical Industrial paid out such a high percentage of its income, although its cashflow is in better shape. Second, earnings per share have been in decline, and its dividend has been cut at least once in the past. Overall, Everlight Chemical Industrial falls short in several key areas here. Unless the investor has strong grounds for an alternative conclusion, we find it hard to get interested in a dividend stock with these characteristics.
Investors generally tend to favour companies with a consistent, stable dividend policy as opposed to those operating an irregular one. Still, investors need to consider a host of other factors, apart from dividend payments, when analysing a company. For example, we've identified 3 warning signs for Everlight Chemical Industrial (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) 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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About TWSE:1711
Everlight Chemical Industrial
Manufactures and sells chemical products in Taiwan, the United States, Asia, Europe, and internationally.
Flawless balance sheet with proven track record.