Reliance, Inc. (NYSE:RS) to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $1.10

Reliance, Inc. (NYSE:RS) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, October 22nd,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 22nd will be given a dividend of 1.10 per share by the industrial products company on Friday, December 6th. This represents a $4.40 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.40%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, November 22nd.

Reliance has raised its dividend by an average of 17.0% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 14 years. Reliance has a payout ratio of 25.3% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Reliance to earn $16.57 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $4.40 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 26.6%.

Reliance Price Performance

Reliance stock opened at $313.56 on Thursday. The firm has a market cap of $16.97 billion, a PE ratio of 17.22 and a beta of 0.85. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.12, a current ratio of 3.31 and a quick ratio of 1.58. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $293.66 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $290.45. Reliance has a one year low of $261.77 and a one year high of $342.20.

Reliance (NYSE:RS) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 24th. The industrial products company reported $3.64 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $3.66 by ($0.02). The firm had revenue of $3.42 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.38 billion. Reliance had a return on equity of 13.68% and a net margin of 7.42%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was down 5.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $5.00 EPS. As a group, research analysts expect that Reliance will post 16.45 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. BMO Capital Markets decreased their price objective on shares of Reliance from $340.00 to $330.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, October 25th. KeyCorp lowered their price target on Reliance from $335.00 to $325.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 14th. Finally, Wolfe Research cut Reliance from a “peer perform” rating to an “underperform” rating and set a $262.00 target price on the stock. in a research report on Friday, July 26th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $326.40.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Reliance news, Director Mark V. Kaminski sold 5,000 shares of Reliance stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 28th. The stock was sold at an average price of $298.01, for a total transaction of $1,490,050.00. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CFO Arthur Ajemyan sold 6,332 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $318.18, for a total transaction of $2,014,715.76. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 9,245 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,941,574.10. This represents a 40.65 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 17,832 shares of company stock valued at $5,595,881 in the last 90 days. Corporate insiders own 0.69% of the company’s stock.

About Reliance

Reliance, Inc operates as a diversified metal solutions provider and the metals service center company in the United States, Canada, and internationally. The company distributes a line of approximately 100,000 metal products, including alloy, aluminum, brass, copper, carbon steel, stainless steel, titanium, and specialty steel products; and provides metals processing services to general manufacturing, non-residential construction, transportation, aerospace, energy, electronics and semiconductor fabrication, and heavy industries.