Yahoo Finance Should You Buy K3 Capital Group PLC (LON:K3C) For Its Dividend?
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Dividend paying stocks like K3 Capital Group PLC (LON:K3C) tend to be popular with investors, and for good reason - some research suggests a significant amount of all stock market returns come from reinvested dividends. If you are hoping to live on the income from dividends, it's important to be a lot more stringent with your investments than the average punter.
In this case, K3 Capital Group pays a decent-sized 8.1% dividend yield, and has been distributing cash to shareholders for the past two years. A 8.1% yield does look good. Could the short payment history hint at future dividend growth? Remember that the recent share price drop will make K3 Capital Group's yield look higher, even though recent events might have impacted the company's prospects. Before you buy any stock for its dividend however, you should always remember Warren Buffett's two rules: 1) Don't lose money, and 2) Remember rule #1. We'll run through some checks below to help with this.
Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis
Payout ratios
Dividends are usually paid out of company earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Comparing dividend payments to a company's net profit after tax is a simple way of reality-checking whether a dividend is sustainable. K3 Capital Group paid out 87% of its profit as dividends, over the trailing twelve month period. Paying out a majority of its earnings limits the amount that can be reinvested in the business. This may indicate a commitment to paying a dividend, or a dearth of investment opportunities.
In addition to comparing dividends against profits, we should inspect whether the company generated enough cash to pay its dividend. K3 Capital Group paid out 54% of its cash flow as dividends last year, which does not seem unusual.
While the above analysis focuses on dividends relative to a company's earnings, we do note K3 Capital Group'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 K3 Capital Group's latest financial position, by checking our visualisation of its financial health.
Dividend Volatility
From the perspective of an income investor who wants to earn dividends for many years, there is not much point buying a stock if its dividend is regularly cut or is not reliable. The company has been paying a stable dividend for a few years now, but we'd like to see more evidence of consistency over a longer period. During the past two-year period, the first annual payment was UK£0.044 in 2017, compared to UK£0.11 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 60% per year over this time.
We're not overly excited about the relatively short history of dividend payments, however the dividend is growing at a nice rate and we might take a closer look.
Dividend Growth Potential
The other half of the dividend investing equation is evaluating whether earnings per share (EPS) are growing. Growing EPS can help maintain or increase the purchasing power of the dividend over the long run. It's not great to see that K3 Capital Group's have fallen at approximately 6.6% over the past five years. Declining earnings per share over a number of years is not a great sign for the dividend investor. Without some improvement, this does not bode well for the long term value of a company's dividend.
We'd also point out that K3 Capital Group issued a meaningful number of new shares in the past year. Regularly issuing new shares can be detrimental - it's hard to grow dividends per share when new shares are regularly being created.
Conclusion
To summarise, shareholders should always check that K3 Capital Group's dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. First, we think K3 Capital Group is paying out an acceptable percentage of its cashflow and profit. Earnings per share are down, and to our mind K3 Capital Group has not been paying a dividend long enough to demonstrate its resilience across economic cycles. In summary, K3 Capital Group has a number of shortcomings that we'd find it hard to get past. Things could change, but we think there are likely more attractive alternatives out there.
Are management backing themselves to deliver performance? Check their shareholdings in K3 Capital Group in our latest insider ownership analysis.
If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. 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. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
