Yahoo Finance Does Razor Energy Corp. (CVE:RZE) Have A Place In Your Dividend Stock Portfolio?
Is Razor Energy Corp. (CVE:RZE) a good dividend stock? How can we tell? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. If you are hoping to live on your dividends, it's important to be more stringent with your investments than the average punter. Regular readers know we like to apply the same approach to each dividend stock, and we hope you'll find our analysis useful.
Some readers mightn't know much about Razor Energy's 9.0% dividend, as it has only been paying distributions for a year or so. The company also bought back stock equivalent to around 7.3% of market capitalisation this year. Some simple analysis can reduce the risk of holding Razor Energy for its dividend, and we'll focus on the most important aspects below.
Explore this interactive chart for our latest analysis on Razor Energy!
Payout ratios
Companies (usually) pay dividends out of their earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, the dividend might have to be cut. So we need to form a view on if a company's dividend is sustainable, relative to its net profit after tax. Although Razor Energy pays a dividend, it was loss-making during the past year. When a company is loss-making, we next need to check to see if its cash flows can support the dividend.
Razor Energy paid out 17% of its free cash flow as dividends last year, which is conservative and suggests the dividend is sustainable.
Remember, you can always get a snapshot of Razor Energy's latest financial position, by checking our visualisation of its financial health.
Dividend Volatility
One of the major risks of relying on dividend income, is the potential for a company to struggle financially and cut its dividend. Not only is your income cut, but the value of your investment declines as well - nasty. This company has been paying a dividend for less than 2 years, which we think is too soon to consider it a reliable dividend stock. Its most recent annual dividend was CA$0.15 per share.
We like that the dividend hasn't been shrinking. However we're conscious that the company hasn't got an overly long track record of dividend payments yet, which makes us wary of relying on its dividend income.
Dividend Growth Potential
The other half of the dividend investing equation is evaluating whether earnings per share (EPS) are growing. Growing EPS can help maintain or increase the purchasing power of the dividend over the long run. Razor Energy's earnings per share have fallen -514% over the past year. This is a pretty serious concern, and it would be worth investigating whether something fundamental in the business has changed - or broken. We do note though, one year is too short a time to be drawing strong conclusions about a company's future prospects.
Conclusion
When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. We're not keen on the fact that Razor Energy paid dividends despite reporting a loss over the past year, although fortunately its dividend was covered by cash flow. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any earnings growth, and the company's dividend history has been too short for us to evaluate the consistency of the dividend. Overall, Razor Energy falls short in several key areas here. Unless the investor has strong grounds for an alternative conclusion, we find it hard to get interested in a dividend stock with these characteristics.
See if management have their own wealth at stake, by checking insider shareholdings in Razor Energy stock.
If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
