Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS) Declares Quarterly Dividend of $0.43

Fortis Inc. (NYSE:FTS) announced a quarterly dividend on Friday, February 14th,Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, May 16th will be given a dividend of 0.4324 per share by the utilities provider on Sunday, June 1st. This represents a $1.73 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.86%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, May 16th.

Fortis has raised its dividend payment by an average of 5.2% annually over the last three years. Fortis has a dividend payout ratio of 70.0% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Fortis to earn $2.34 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.73 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 73.9%.

Fortis Trading Up 1.1 %

FTS opened at $44.81 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 0.74, a quick ratio of 0.63 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.32. The stock has a market capitalization of $22.37 billion, a PE ratio of 18.83, a PEG ratio of 3.94 and a beta of 0.50. Fortis has a 1-year low of $36.86 and a 1-year high of $46.06. The firm has a 50-day moving average price of $42.32 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $43.51.

Fortis (NYSE:FTS) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Friday, February 14th. The utilities provider reported $0.59 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.57 by $0.02. Fortis had a net margin of 14.06% and a return on equity of 7.01%. The firm had revenue of $2.11 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.08 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $0.72 EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Fortis will post 2.26 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several equities research analysts have recently commented on FTS shares. Jefferies Financial Group started coverage on shares of Fortis in a research report on Thursday. They set a “hold” rating for the company. Raymond James cut shares of Fortis from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 6th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and three have assigned a hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Fortis currently has an average rating of “Hold”.

About Fortis

Fortis Inc operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 447,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 103,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,408 megawatts (MW), including 68 MW of solar capacity and 250 MV of wind capacity.