Only 4 Days Left To CIMIC Group Limited (ASX:CIM)’s Ex-Dividend Date, Is It Worth Buying?

Investors who want to cash in on CIMIC Group Limited’s (ASX:CIM) upcoming dividend of AU$0.70 per share have only 4 days left to buy the shares before its ex-dividend date, 12 September 2018, in time for dividends payable on the 04 October 2018. Is this future income stream a compelling catalyst for dividend investors to think about the stock as an investment today? Let’s take a look at CIMIC Group’s most recent financial data to examine its dividend characteristics in more detail.

View our latest analysis for CIMIC Group

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 it paying an annual yield above 75% of dividend payers?

• Has it consistently paid a stable dividend without missing a payment or drastically cutting payout?

• Has dividend per share amount increased 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?

ASX:CIM Historical Dividend Yield September 7th 18

How well does CIMIC Group fit our criteria?

The current trailing twelve-month payout ratio for the stock is 63.3%, which means that the dividend is covered by earnings. In the near future, analysts are predicting a payout ratio of 65.4%, leading to a dividend yield of around 3.3%. Moreover, EPS should increase to A$2.47.

If there’s one type of stock you want to be reliable, it’s dividend stocks and their stable income-generating ability. Dividend payments from CIMIC Group have been volatile in the past 10 years, with some years experiencing significant drops of over 25%. This means that dividend hunters should probably steer clear of the stock, at least for now until the track record improves.

In terms of its peers, CIMIC Group produces a yield of 3.0%, which is on the low-side for Construction stocks.

Next Steps:

If CIMIC Group is in your portfolio for cash-generating reasons, there may be better alternatives out there. 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 essential factors you should look at:

1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for CIM’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for CIM’s outlook.

2. Valuation: What is CIM 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 CIM is currently mispriced by the market.

3. 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.