Fortis (NYSE:FTS) Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.44

Key Points

• Fortis announced a quarterly dividend of $0.44 per share, a 2.9% increase from the previous dividend, with an ex-dividend date of August 19th.
• The company has a payout ratio of 69.5%, indicating its dividend is adequately supported by earnings, with expectations to maintain dividend coverage next year.
• Fortis shares saw a trading increase of 1.8%, reaching $49.85, with a strong market capitalization of $25.10 billion.

Fortis (NYSE:FTS - Get Free Report) announced a quarterly dividend on Friday, August 1st, Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, August 19th will be given a dividend of 0.4448 per share by the utilities provider on Monday, September 1st. This represents a c) annualized dividend and a yield of 3.6%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, August 19th. This is a 2.9% increase from Fortis's previous quarterly dividend of $0.43.

Fortis has a payout ratio of 69.5% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Fortis to earn $2.47 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.78 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 72.1%.

Fortis Stock Up 1.8%

Shares of FTS traded up $0.88 during mid-day trading on Friday, reaching $49.85. The company had a trading volume of 1,030,841 shares, compared to its average volume of 601,646. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.34, a quick ratio of 0.63 and a current ratio of 0.76. The firm has a 50-day moving average price of $47.77 and a 200 day moving average price of $46.15. Fortis has a 52 week low of $40.32 and a 52 week high of $50.56. The company has a market capitalization of $25.10 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.03, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.84 and a beta of 0.48.

Fortis (NYSE:FTS - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 7th. The utilities provider reported $0.70 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts' consensus estimates of $0.69 by $0.01. Fortis had a return on equity of 7.08% and a net margin of 14.20%. The firm had revenue of $2.31 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $3.42 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $0.93 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Fortis will post 2.35 EPS for the current year.

About Fortis

Fortis Inc operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 447,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 103,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,408 megawatts (MW), including 68 MW of solar capacity and 250 MV of wind capacity.

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