Assured Guaranty Ltd. Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.31 (NYSE:AGO)

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) declared a quarterly dividend on Friday, November 8th,NASDAQ Dividends reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 22nd will be given a dividend of 0.31 per share by the financial services provider on Friday, December 6th. This represents a $1.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.36%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, November 22nd.

Assured Guaranty has raised its dividend by an average of 11.9% per year over the last three years. Assured Guaranty has a dividend payout ratio of 19.8% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Assured Guaranty to earn $6.50 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.24 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 19.1%.

Assured Guaranty Price Performance

AGO opened at $91.25 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $4.64 billion, a P/E ratio of 7.07 and a beta of 1.10. The company has a 50-day moving average of $83.74 and a 200-day moving average of $79.98. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29, a quick ratio of 0.91 and a current ratio of 0.91. Assured Guaranty has a 1-year low of $66.14 and a 1-year high of $96.60.

Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Monday, November 11th. The financial services provider reported $2.42 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.42 by $1.00. Assured Guaranty had a return on equity of 11.58% and a net margin of 70.37%. The firm had revenue of $269.00 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $202.57 million. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $3.42 earnings per share. Assured Guaranty’s quarterly revenue was down 33.3% on a year-over-year basis. Equities analysts expect that Assured Guaranty will post 7.3 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on AGO shares. UBS Group raised their price objective on Assured Guaranty from $87.00 to $95.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Monday. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Assured Guaranty from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th. Finally, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods lifted their price target on shares of Assured Guaranty from $92.00 to $105.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Monday.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, Director Yukiko Omura sold 3,599 shares of Assured Guaranty stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, September 26th. The stock was sold at an average price of $79.73, for a total transaction of $286,948.27. Following the sale, the director now owns 19,285 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,537,593.05. The trade was a 15.73 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CEO Dominic Frederico sold 31,000 shares of Assured Guaranty stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $80.01, for a total value of $2,480,310.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,380,119 shares in the company, valued at $110,423,321.19. The trade was a 2.20 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 5.10% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Assured Guaranty Company Profile

Assured Guaranty Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides credit protection products to public finance, infrastructure, and structured finance markets in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Insurance and Asset Management. The company offers financial guaranty insurance that protects holders of debt instruments and other monetary obligations from defaults in scheduled payments.