Yahoo Finance Should James Hardie Industries plc (ASX:JHX) Be Part Of Your Dividend Portfolio?
Dividends play a key role in compounding returns over time and can form a large part of our portfolio return. Historically, James Hardie Industries plc (ASX:JHX) has paid dividends to shareholders, and these days it yields 3.0%. Should it have a place in your portfolio? Let’s take a look at James Hardie Industries in more detail.
See our latest analysis for James Hardie Industries
Here’s how I find good dividend stocks
When assessing a stock as a potential addition to my dividend Portfolio, I look at these five areas:
Is it the top 25% annual dividend yield payer?
Has it paid dividend every year without dramatically reducing payout in the past?
Has it increased its dividend per share amount over the past?
Can it afford to pay the current rate of dividends from its earnings?
Will the company be able to keep paying dividend based on the future earnings growth?
How well does James Hardie Industries fit our criteria?
The company currently pays out 98% of its earnings as a dividend, according to its trailing twelve-month data, which means that the dividend is not well-covered by its earnings. However, going forward, analysts expect JHX’s payout to fall into a more sustainable range of 62% of its earnings, which leads to a dividend yield of 4.0%. In addition to this, EPS should increase to $0.70, meaning that the lower payout ratio does not necessarily implicate a lower dividend payment.
When assessing the forecast sustainability of a dividend it is also worth considering the cash flow of the business. Cash flow is important because companies with strong cash flow can usually sustain higher payout ratios.
If there is one thing that you want to be reliable in your life, it’s dividend stocks and their constant income stream. Whilst its per-share payments have increased during the past 10 years, there has been some hiccups. Shareholders would have seen a few years of reduced payments in this time.
Relative to peers, James Hardie Industries produces a yield of 3.0%, which is on the low-side for Basic Materials stocks.
Next Steps:
Whilst there are few things you may like about James Hardie Industries from a dividend stock perspective, the truth is that overall it probably is not the best choice for a dividend investor. However, if you are not strictly just a dividend investor, the stock could still offer some interesting investment opportunities. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, I urge potential investors to try and get a good understanding of the underlying business and its fundamentals before deciding on an investment. I’ve put together three fundamental aspects you should further examine:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for JHX’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for JHX’s outlook.
Valuation: What is JHX worth today? Even if the stock is a cash cow, it’s not worth an infinite price. The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether JHX is currently mispriced by the market.
Dividend Rockstars: Are there better dividend payers with stronger fundamentals out there? Check out our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
