MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) Announces $1.60 Quarterly Dividend

MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, April 23rd, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Friday, May 17th will be paid a dividend of 1.60 per share by the technology company on Friday, May 31st. This represents a $6.40 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.24%.

MSCI has raised its dividend by an average of 23.7% per year over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 10 years. MSCI has a dividend payout ratio of 37.6% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect MSCI to earn $16.95 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $6.40 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 37.8%.

MSCI Trading Up 1.0 %

Shares of NYSE MSCI opened at $515.10 on Tuesday. MSCI has a 12-month low of $451.55 and a 12-month high of $617.39. The company has a market cap of $40.81 billion, a P/E ratio of 35.77, a P/E/G ratio of 2.56 and a beta of 1.06. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $550.50 and a 200 day moving average price of $539.55.

MSCI (NYSE:MSCI) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, April 23rd. The technology company reported $3.52 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.46 by $0.06. MSCI had a negative return on equity of 111.17% and a net margin of 45.42%. The firm had revenue of $680.00 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $685.47 million. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $3.14 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 14.8% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that MSCI will post 14.84 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have recently weighed in on MSCI. Raymond James restated a “market perform” rating on shares of MSCI in a research note on Friday, January 5th. Royal Bank of Canada restated an “outperform” rating and set a $638.00 target price on shares of MSCI in a research note on Friday, April 12th. Wolfe Research began coverage on MSCI in a research note on Tuesday, March 26th. They set a “peer perform” rating for the company. Wells Fargo & Company raised their target price on MSCI from $615.00 to $660.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, January 31st. Finally, StockNews.com downgraded MSCI from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, February 20th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have given a hold rating and eight have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, MSCI presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $581.57.

About MSCI

MSCI Inc, together with its subsidiaries, provides critical decision support tools and solutions for the investment community to manage investment processes worldwide. The Index segment provides indexes for use in various areas of the investment process, including indexed financial product, such as ETFs, mutual funds, annuities, futures, options, structured products, and over-the-counter derivatives; performance benchmarking; portfolio construction and rebalancing; and asset allocation, as well as licenses GICS and GICS Direct.