Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.70

Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, October 24th,Zacks Dividends reports. Shareholders of record on Thursday, November 21st will be paid a dividend of 0.70 per share by the technology company on Thursday, December 5th. This represents a $2.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.17%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 21st.

Littelfuse has increased its dividend payment by an average of 9.2% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 15 consecutive years. Littelfuse has a dividend payout ratio of 27.1% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Littelfuse to earn $9.92 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 28.2%.

Littelfuse Price Performance

Shares of LFUS opened at $239.36 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.31, a quick ratio of 2.52 and a current ratio of 3.55. Littelfuse has a fifty-two week low of $222.91 and a fifty-two week high of $275.58. The firm has a 50-day simple moving average of $255.32 and a 200-day simple moving average of $256.65. The company has a market capitalization of $5.94 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.77, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.37 and a beta of 1.28.

Littelfuse (NASDAQ:LFUS) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 29th. The technology company reported $2.71 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.09 by $0.62. The company had revenue of $567.39 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $557.38 million. Littelfuse had a return on equity of 8.49% and a net margin of 8.88%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was down 6.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the firm earned $2.97 EPS. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Littelfuse will post 8.47 earnings per share for the current year.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities analysts have commented on the stock. Robert W. Baird upped their price objective on shares of Littelfuse from $300.00 to $315.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. Stifel Nicolaus raised shares of Littelfuse from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price target for the stock from $270.00 to $280.00 in a report on Tuesday, August 13th. Benchmark reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of Littelfuse in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. TD Cowen boosted their target price on Littelfuse from $250.00 to $260.00 and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 1st. Finally, StockNews.com raised Littelfuse from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, October 18th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, four have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $285.00.

Insider Activity

In other Littelfuse news, CEO David W. Heinzmann sold 2,091 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 26th. The shares were sold at an average price of $274.65, for a total transaction of $574,293.15. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 59,654 shares in the company, valued at approximately $16,383,971.10. This trade represents a 3.39 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, SVP Matthew Cole sold 1,436 shares of Littelfuse stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $246.02, for a total transaction of $353,284.72. Following the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 5,522 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,358,522.44. The trade was a 20.64 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 12,242 shares of company stock worth $3,318,974. Company insiders own 2.30% of the company’s stock.

About Littelfuse

Littelfuse, Inc designs, manufactures, and sells electronic components, modules, and subassemblies in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The company operates through Electronic, Transportation, and Industrial segments. The Electronics segment offers fuses and fuse accessories, positive temperature coefficient resettable fuses, electromechanical switches and interconnect solutions, polymer electrostatic discharge suppressors, varistors, reed switch based magnetic sensing products, and gas discharge tubes; and discrete transient voltage suppressor (TVS) diodes, TVS diode arrays, protection and switching thyristors, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and diodes, and insulated gate bipolar transistors.