Black Hills Co. to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.65 (NYSE:BKH)

Black Hills Co. (NYSE:BKH) declared a quarterly dividend on Monday, April 22nd, Zacks reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, May 17th will be paid a dividend of 0.65 per share by the utilities provider on Saturday, June 1st. This represents a $2.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.80%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, May 16th.

Black Hills has increased its dividend by an average of 4.8% annually over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 1 years. Black Hills has a payout ratio of 63.1% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings.

Black Hills Stock Performance

BKH traded down $0.17 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $54.20. The stock had a trading volume of 60,169 shares, compared to its average volume of 541,052. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $52.79 and a 200-day moving average price of $52.18. The firm has a market cap of $3.70 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.81 and a beta of 0.64. Black Hills has a one year low of $46.43 and a one year high of $66.85. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a current ratio of 0.70 and a quick ratio of 0.56.

Black Hills (NYSE:BKH) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 8th. The utilities provider reported $1.17 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.06 by $0.11. The business had revenue of $591.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $863.67 million. Black Hills had a return on equity of 8.09% and a net margin of 11.25%. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $1.11 EPS. As a group, research analysts predict that Black Hills will post 3.9 EPS for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of analysts have recently weighed in on BKH shares. Scotiabank cut their target price on Black Hills from $58.00 to $54.00 and set a “sector perform” rating for the company in a research report on Monday. Royal Bank of Canada cut their target price on Black Hills from $61.00 to $57.00 and set a “sector perform” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, February 9th. Finally, StockNews.com cut Black Hills from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Thursday, March 28th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and four have issued a hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Black Hills has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $55.00.

Black Hills Company Profile

Black Hills Corporation, through its subsidiaries, operates as an electric and natural gas utility company in the United States. The company operates in two segments: Electric Utilities and Gas Utilities. The Electric Utilities segment generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 222,000 electric utility customers in Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming; and owns and operates 1,394 megawatts of generation capacity and 9,106 miles of electric transmission and distribution lines.