The AES Co. to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.17 (NYSE:AES)

The AES Co. (NYSE:AES) announced a quarterly dividend on Friday, October 11th, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Friday, November 1st will be paid a dividend of 0.1725 per share by the utilities provider on Friday, November 15th. This represents a $0.69 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.98%.

AES has increased its dividend by an average of 5.0% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 11 consecutive years. AES has a payout ratio of 33.2% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect AES to earn $2.05 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.69 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 33.7%.

AES Trading Down 0.1 %

Shares of NYSE:AES opened at $17.32 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $12.31 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.50 and a beta of 1.07. AES has a 1-year low of $12.87 and a 1-year high of $22.21. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.63, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a current ratio of 0.97. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $17.89 and a 200 day moving average price of $18.35.

AES (NYSE:AES) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, August 1st. The utilities provider reported $0.38 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.36 by $0.02. The firm had revenue of $2.94 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.22 billion. AES had a net margin of 6.07% and a return on equity of 32.74%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was down 2.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.21 earnings per share. On average, research analysts anticipate that AES will post 1.9 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research analysts have recently weighed in on AES shares. Jefferies Financial Group started coverage on shares of AES in a report on Wednesday, September 11th. They set a “buy” rating and a $20.00 price target on the stock. Evercore ISI upgraded shares of AES to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 18th. Finally, Barclays cut their price target on shares of AES from $23.00 to $22.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, July 22nd. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have issued a hold rating, six have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, AES currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $21.50.

About AES

The AES Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified power generation and utility company in the United States and internationally. The company owns and/or operates power plants to generate and sell power to customers, such as utilities, industrial users, and other intermediaries; owns and/or operates utilities to generate or purchase, distribute, transmit, and sell electricity to end-user customers in the residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental sectors; and generates and sells electricity on the wholesale market.