Preferred Bank (NASDAQ:PFBC) Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.75

Preferred Bank (NASDAQ:PFBC) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, December 26th,RTT News reports. Investors of record on Thursday, January 9th will be paid a dividend of 0.75 per share by the bank on Thursday, January 23rd. This represents a $3.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.43%. This is a boost from Preferred Bank’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.70.

Preferred Bank has increased its dividend by an average of 22.4% per year over the last three years. Preferred Bank has a dividend payout ratio of 31.3% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Preferred Bank to earn $8.82 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.80 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 31.7%.

Preferred Bank Trading Up 0.7 %

Shares of Preferred Bank stock traded up $0.60 on Thursday, hitting $87.34. The stock had a trading volume of 42,668 shares, compared to its average volume of 81,194. Preferred Bank has a twelve month low of $66.88 and a twelve month high of $99.78. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20, a quick ratio of 1.08 and a current ratio of 1.08. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.26 billion, a P/E ratio of 8.75 and a beta of 0.96. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $90.35 and a 200 day moving average of $82.98.

Preferred Bank (NASDAQ:PFBC) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 21st. The bank reported $2.46 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.39 by $0.07. The company had revenue of $132.88 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $68.80 million. Preferred Bank had a net margin of 26.20% and a return on equity of 19.01%. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $2.71 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts expect that Preferred Bank will post 9.75 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, Stephens lowered shares of Preferred Bank from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Monday, December 9th.

About Preferred Bank

Preferred Bank provides various commercial banking products and services to small and mid-sized businesses and their owners, entrepreneurs, real estate developers and investors, professionals, and high net worth individuals. The company accepts checking, savings, and money market deposit accounts; fixed-rate and fixed maturity retail, and non-retail certificates of deposit; and individual retirement accounts.