Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) Plans $0.05 Monthly Dividend

Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC - Get Free Report) declared a monthly dividend on Monday, May 12th, Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, August 27th will be paid a dividend of 0.045 per share by the financial services provider on Thursday, September 18th. This represents a $0.54 annualized dividend and a yield of 15.25%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, August 27th.

Prospect Capital has decreased its dividend by an average of 2.1% annually over the last three years. Prospect Capital has a dividend payout ratio of 101.9% meaning the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments.

Prospect Capital Trading Down 2.2%

Shares of PSEC opened at $3.54 on Monday. The company's fifty day moving average is $3.87 and its 200 day moving average is $4.26. Prospect Capital has a fifty-two week low of $3.39 and a fifty-two week high of $5.72. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.58 billion, a PE ratio of -17.70 and a beta of 0.93. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.60, a quick ratio of 0.76 and a current ratio of 0.76.

Prospect Capital (NASDAQ:PSEC - Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, May 8th. The financial services provider reported $0.19 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.14 by $0.05. The business had revenue of $170.72 million for the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $174.29 million. Prospect Capital had a net margin of 1.18% and a return on equity of 12.31%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research firms have recently commented on PSEC. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Prospect Capital from a "sell" rating to a "hold" rating in a report on Saturday, April 12th. Wells Fargo & Company cut their price target on shares of Prospect Capital from $4.00 to $3.50 and set an "underweight" rating on the stock in a report on Monday, April 28th.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CEO John F. Barry purchased 2,000,000 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction on Tuesday, March 11th. The stock was acquired at an average cost of $4.32 per share, with a total value of $8,640,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 81,501,933 shares in the company, valued at $352,088,350.56. This represents a 2.52% increase in their position. The purchase was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, Director William Gremp acquired 19,100 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, March 18th. The stock was bought at an average cost of $4.29 per share, with a total value of $81,939.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 75,153 shares in the company, valued at $322,406.37. The trade was a 34.07% increase in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders acquired a total of 2,548,000 shares of company stock valued at $10,970,715 over the last three months. 28.25% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

About Prospect Capital

Prospect Capital Corporation is a business development company. It specializes in middle market, mature, mezzanine finance, later stage, emerging growth, leveraged buyouts, refinancing, acquisitions, recapitalizations, turnaround, growth capital, development, capital expenditures and subordinated debt tranches of collateralized loan obligations, cash flow term loans, market place lending and bridge transactions.

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