Yahoo Finance Is Lakeland Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:LBAI) A Smart Choice For Dividend Investors?
Dividends can be underrated but they form a large part of investment returns, playing an important role in compounding returns in the long run. Historically, Lakeland Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:LBAI) has paid dividends to shareholders, and these days it yields 2.9%. Let’s dig deeper into whether Lakeland Bancorp should have a place in your portfolio.
View our latest analysis for Lakeland Bancorp
Here’s how I find good dividend stocks
Whenever I am looking at a potential dividend stock investment, I always check these five metrics:
Is its annual yield among the top 25% of dividend-paying companies?
Has it consistently paid a stable dividend without missing a payment or drastically cutting payout?
Has dividend per share risen in the past couple of years?
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?
Does Lakeland Bancorp pass our checks?
The company currently pays out 34% of its earnings as a dividend, according to its trailing twelve-month data, meaning the dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Going forward, analysts expect LBAI’s payout to remain around the same level at 34% of its earnings. Assuming a constant share price, this equates to a dividend yield of around 3.0%. Furthermore, EPS should increase to $1.37.
When thinking about whether a dividend is sustainable, another factor to consider is the cash flow. Companies with strong cash flow can sustain a higher payout ratio, while companies with weaker cash flow generally cannot.
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.
In terms of its peers, Lakeland Bancorp has a yield of 2.9%, which is high for Banks stocks but still below the market’s top dividend payers.
Next Steps:
Considering the dividend attributes we analyzed above, Lakeland Bancorp is definitely worth keeping an eye on for someone looking to build a dedicated income portfolio. 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. Below, I’ve compiled three pertinent factors you should further examine:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for LBAI’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for LBAI’s outlook.
Valuation: What is LBAI 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 LBAI is currently mispriced by the market.
Other 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.
