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Is Heartland Financial USA, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLF) A Smart Choice For Dividend Investors?

Simply Wall St

Is Heartland Financial USA, Inc. ( NASDAQ:HTLF ) a good dividend stock? How would you know? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. Unfortunately, it's common for investors to be enticed in by the seemingly attractive yield, and lose money when the company has to cut its dividend payments.

A 1.6% yield is nothing to get excited about, but investors probably think the long payment history suggests Heartland Financial USA has some staying power. Some simple analysis can offer a lot of insights when buying a company for its dividend, and we'll go through this below.

Explore this interactive chart for our latest analysis on Heartland Financial USA!

NasdaqGS:HTLF Historical Dividend Yield, May 17th 2019


Payout ratios

Companies (usually) pay dividends out of their earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, the dividend might have to be cut. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. In the last year, Heartland Financial USA paid out 15% of its profit as dividends. With a low payout ratio, it looks like the dividend is comprehensively covered by earnings.

Consider getting our latest analysis on Heartland Financial USA's financial position here.

Dividend Volatility

From the perspective of an income investor who wants to earn dividends for many years, there is not much point buying a stock if its dividend is regularly cut or is not reliable. Heartland Financial USA has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. This dividend has been unstable, which we define as having fallen by at least 20% one or more times over this time. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was US$0.40 in 2009, compared to US$0.69 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 5.6% per year over this time. The growth in dividends has not been linear, but the CAGR is a decent approximation of the rate of change over this time frame.

It's good to see the dividend growing at a decent rate, but the dividend has been cut at least once in the past. Heartland Financial USA might have put its house in order since then, but we remain cautious.

Dividend Growth Potential

With a relatively unstable dividend, it's even more important to see if earnings per share (EPS) are growing. Why take the risk of a dividend getting cut, unless there's a good chance of bigger dividends in future? Strong earnings per share (EPS) growth might encourage our interest in the company despite fluctuating dividends, which is why it's great to see Heartland Financial USA has grown its earnings per share at 12% per annum over the past five years. Rapid earnings growth and a low payout ratio suggests this company has been effectively reinvesting in its business. Should that continue, this company could have a bright future.


To summarise, shareholders should always check that Heartland Financial USA's dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. Firstly, we like that Heartland Financial USA has a low and conservative payout ratio. Next, earnings growth has been good, but unfortunately the dividend has been cut at least once in the past. Heartland Financial USA fits all of our criteria, and we think there are a lot of positives to it from a dividend perspective.

Earnings growth generally bodes well for the future value of company dividend payments. See if the 6 Heartland Financial USA analysts we track are forecasting continued growth with our free report on analyst estimates for the company .

We have also put together a list of global stocks with a market capitalisation above $1bn and yielding more 3%.

