ALLETE, Inc. (NYSE:ALE) Increases Dividend to $0.71 Per Share

ALLETE, Inc. (NYSE:ALE) declared a quarterly dividend on Friday, October 25th,RTT News reports. Investors of record on Friday, November 15th will be given a dividend of 0.705 per share by the utilities provider on Sunday, December 1st. This represents a $2.82 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.36%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, November 15th. This is a positive change from ALLETE’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.70.

ALLETE has increased its dividend by an average of 3.1% per year over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 14 years. ALLETE has a dividend payout ratio of 70.9% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings.

ALLETE Stock Down 0.5 %

ALE opened at $64.72 on Thursday. ALLETE has a twelve month low of $53.96 and a twelve month high of $65.86. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $64.20 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $63.52. The stock has a market cap of $3.74 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.74 and a beta of 0.80. The company has a quick ratio of 0.95, a current ratio of 1.45 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.51.

ALLETE (NYSE:ALE) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 30th. The utilities provider reported $0.78 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.99 by ($0.21). ALLETE had a net margin of 11.49% and a return on equity of 5.99%. The business had revenue of $407.20 million for the quarter. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.49 EPS. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 7.5% compared to the same quarter last year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities analysts have recently commented on ALE shares. Sidoti raised shares of ALLETE from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday, September 30th. StockNews.com started coverage on ALLETE in a research note on Thursday, November 7th. They set a “hold” rating for the company. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, ALLETE currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $62.00.

ALLETE Company Profile

ALLETE, Inc operates as an energy company. The company operates through Regulated Operations, ALLETE Clean Energy, and Corporate and Other segments. It generates electricity from coal-fired, biomass co-fired / natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, and solar. In addition, the company provides regulated utility electric services in northwestern Wisconsin to approximately 15,000 electric customers, 13,000 natural gas customers, and 10,000 water customers, as well as regulated utility electric services in northeastern Minnesota to approximately 150,000 retail customers and 14 non-affiliated municipal customers.