Cabot Co. (NYSE:CBT) Declares Dividend Increase - $0.45 Per Share

Cabot Co. (NYSE:CBT - Get Free Report) declared a quarterly dividend on Monday, May 5th, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Friday, May 30th will be given a dividend of 0.45 per share by the specialty chemicals company on Friday, June 13th. This represents a $1.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.43%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, May 30th. This is a 4.7% increase from Cabot's previous quarterly dividend of $0.43.

Cabot has increased its dividend payment by an average of 6.0% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 14 consecutive years. Cabot has a payout ratio of 22.5% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Cabot to earn $8.37 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.80 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 21.5%.

Cabot Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:CBT traded down $0.38 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $73.93. 381,847 shares of the company's stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 402,680. The company's fifty day simple moving average is $80.15 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $91.15. The company has a market cap of $4.01 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.82, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.74 and a beta of 0.91. Cabot has a 52 week low of $71.64 and a 52 week high of $117.46. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.72, a quick ratio of 1.29 and a current ratio of 2.00.

Cabot (NYSE:CBT - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, May 5th. The specialty chemicals company reported $1.90 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.86 by $0.04. Cabot had a net margin of 10.60% and a return on equity of 26.79%. The business had revenue of $936.00 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.02 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.78 EPS. The firm's quarterly revenue was down 8.1% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Cabot will post 7.57 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

CBT has been the subject of several research analyst reports. UBS Group reduced their price objective on Cabot from $93.00 to $83.00 and set a "neutral" rating for the company in a research note on Monday, April 7th. StockNews.com lowered shares of Cabot from a "buy" rating to a "hold" rating in a research report on Wednesday. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of Cabot from $105.00 to $85.00 and set an "underweight" rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, February 21st.

About Cabot

Cabot Corporation operates as a specialty chemicals and performance materials company. The company operates through two segments, Reinforcement Materials and Performance Chemicals. It offers reinforcing carbons that are used in tires as a rubber reinforcing agent and performance additive, as well as in industrial products, such as hoses, belts, extruded profiles, and molded goods; and engineered elastomer composites solutions.