Seagate Technology Holdings plc Declares Quarterly Dividend of $0.72 (NASDAQ:STX)

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ:STX) declared a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, January 22nd,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, March 19th will be paid a dividend of 0.72 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, April 2nd. This represents a $2.88 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.66%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, March 19th.

Seagate Technology has increased its dividend payment by an average of 1.3% annually over the last three years. Seagate Technology has a dividend payout ratio of 30.6% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Seagate Technology to earn $10.63 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.88 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 27.1%.

Seagate Technology Trading Up 6.8 %

Shares of STX stock opened at $108.18 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $22.88 billion, a PE ratio of 19.78 and a beta of 1.06. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $94.55 and a 200-day simple moving average of $100.33. Seagate Technology has a twelve month low of $82.31 and a twelve month high of $115.32.

Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 22nd. The data storage provider reported $1.58 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.30 by $0.28. Seagate Technology had a net margin of 14.67% and a negative return on equity of 58.59%. The firm had revenue of $2.17 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.13 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted ($0.34) EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 49.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts predict that Seagate Technology will post 7.18 EPS for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other Seagate Technology news, SVP Kian Fatt Chong sold 9,182 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $105.50, for a total value of $968,701.00. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, Director Yolanda Lee Conyers sold 750 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $101.82, for a total transaction of $76,365.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 6,555 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $667,430.10. The trade was a 10.27 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders sold 50,073 shares of company stock worth $5,106,149. Corporate insiders own 0.81% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of brokerages have weighed in on STX. Citigroup increased their target price on shares of Seagate Technology from $120.00 to $125.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday. Bank of America increased their target price on shares of Seagate Technology from $124.00 to $130.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday. The Goldman Sachs Group dropped their price objective on shares of Seagate Technology from $112.00 to $99.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, January 10th. Morgan Stanley dropped their price objective on shares of Seagate Technology from $133.00 to $129.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday. Finally, StockNews.com cut shares of Seagate Technology from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating and thirteen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $122.56.

About Seagate Technology

Seagate Technology Holdings plc provides data storage technology and solutions in Singapore, the United States, the Netherlands, and internationally. It provides mass capacity storage products, including enterprise nearline hard disk drives (HDDs), enterprise nearline solid state drives (SSDs), enterprise nearline systems, video and image HDDs, and network-attached storage drives.