Human Health Holdings Limited's (HKG:1419) periodic dividend will be increasing on the 5th of January to HK$0.03, with investors receiving 7.1% more than last year's HK$0.028. This takes the annual payment to 3.7% of the current stock price, which is about average for the industry.
We like a dividend to be consistent over the long term, so checking whether it is sustainable is important. The last dividend was quite easily covered by Human Health Holdings' earnings. This indicates that a lot of the earnings are being reinvested into the business, with the aim of fueling growth.
Looking forward, EPS could fall by 9.5% if the company can't turn things around from the last few years. Assuming the dividend continues along recent trends, we believe the payout ratio could be 56%, which we are pretty comfortable with and we think is feasible on an earnings basis.
View our latest analysis for Human Health Holdings
Human Health Holdings has been paying dividends for a while, but the track record isn't stellar. Due to this, we are a little bit cautious about the dividend consistency over a full economic cycle. The most recent annual payment of HK$0.03 is about the same as the annual payment 9 years ago. We're glad to see the dividend has risen, but with a limited rate of growth and fluctuations in the payments the total shareholder return may be limited.
With a relatively unstable dividend, it's even more important to evaluate if earnings per share is growing, which could point to a growing dividend in the future. It's not great to see that Human Health Holdings' earnings per share has fallen at approximately 9.5% per year over the past five years. Declining earnings will inevitably lead to the company paying a lower dividend in line with lower profits.
In summary, while it's always good to see the dividend being raised, we don't think Human Health Holdings' payments are rock solid. The company is generating plenty of cash, which could maintain the dividend for a while, but the track record hasn't been great. This company is not in the top tier of income providing stocks.
Investors generally tend to favour companies with a consistent, stable dividend policy as opposed to those operating an irregular one. Still, investors need to consider a host of other factors, apart from dividend payments, when analysing a company. For example, we've picked out 3 warning signs for Human Health Holdings that investors should know about before committing capital to this stock. Is Human Health Holdings not quite the opportunity you were looking for? Why not check out our selection of top dividend stocks.
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