Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS) Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.44

Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS) declared a quarterly dividend on Friday, December 6th,Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Tuesday, February 18th will be paid a dividend of 0.4382 per share by the utilities provider on Saturday, March 1st. This represents a $1.75 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.94%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, February 18th.

Fortis has raised its dividend by an average of 5.7% per year over the last three years. Fortis has a payout ratio of 72.4% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Fortis to earn $2.42 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.76 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 72.7%.

Fortis Stock Down 0.9 %

NYSE:FTS opened at $44.48 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32, a current ratio of 0.74 and a quick ratio of 0.58. Fortis has a 1-year low of $36.86 and a 1-year high of $46.06. The company has a 50-day moving average of $44.32 and a 200 day moving average of $42.56. The firm has a market cap of $22.12 billion, a PE ratio of 18.69, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.08 and a beta of 0.49.

Fortis (NYSE:FTS) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, November 5th. The utilities provider reported $0.85 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.59 by $0.26. The firm had revenue of $2.03 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.01 billion. Fortis had a net margin of 14.06% and a return on equity of 7.01%. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $0.63 EPS. As a group, research analysts anticipate that Fortis will post 2.32 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Bank of America initiated coverage on Fortis in a report on Friday, September 20th. They issued an “underperform” rating on the stock. Raymond James downgraded shares of Fortis from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Wednesday, November 6th. Finally, UBS Group upgraded shares of Fortis to a “strong sell” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 10th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and two have given a hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Reduce”.

Fortis Company Profile

Fortis Inc operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 447,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 103,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,408 megawatts (MW), including 68 MW of solar capacity and 250 MV of wind capacity.