Seagate Technology Holdings plc Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.72 (NASDAQ:STX)

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ:STX) declared a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, January 22nd,Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Wednesday, March 19th will be given a dividend of 0.72 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, April 2nd. This represents a $2.88 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.66%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, March 19th.

Seagate Technology has raised its dividend by an average of 1.3% annually over the last three years. Seagate Technology has a dividend payout ratio of 30.6% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Seagate Technology to earn $10.79 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.88 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 26.7%.

Seagate Technology Stock Performance

STX traded up $6.93 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, reaching $108.18. The stock had a trading volume of 9,751,145 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,760,084. The stock has a market capitalization of $22.88 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.25 and a beta of 1.06. Seagate Technology has a 52 week low of $82.31 and a 52 week high of $115.32. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $94.32 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $100.28.

Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 22nd. The data storage provider reported $1.58 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.30 by $0.28. Seagate Technology had a negative return on equity of 32.19% and a net margin of 11.34%. The firm had revenue of $2.17 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $2.13 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted ($0.34) EPS. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 49.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts expect that Seagate Technology will post 7.18 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Transactions at Seagate Technology

In other Seagate Technology news, Director Yolanda Lee Conyers sold 750 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, December 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $101.82, for a total value of $76,365.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 6,555 shares in the company, valued at $667,430.10. This trade represents a 10.27 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, Director Jay L. Geldmacher sold 4,100 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, October 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $103.30, for a total value of $423,530.00. Following the sale, the director now owns 2,852 shares in the company, valued at approximately $294,611.60. This represents a 58.98 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 54,173 shares of company stock valued at $5,529,679 in the last ninety days. 0.81% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research firms recently weighed in on STX. Bank of America boosted their price target on shares of Seagate Technology from $124.00 to $130.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Wedbush reiterated an “outperform” rating and set a $150.00 target price on shares of Seagate Technology in a research report on Wednesday, October 23rd. Evercore ISI raised their price target on Seagate Technology from $125.00 to $135.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 23rd. Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated a “neutral” rating and issued a $120.00 price objective on shares of Seagate Technology in a report on Wednesday. Finally, Northland Securities restated an “outperform” rating and set a $160.00 target price (up previously from $144.00) on shares of Seagate Technology in a report on Wednesday. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating and thirteen have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $122.56.

About Seagate Technology

Seagate Technology Holdings plc provides data storage technology and solutions in Singapore, the United States, the Netherlands, and internationally. It provides mass capacity storage products, including enterprise nearline hard disk drives (HDDs), enterprise nearline solid state drives (SSDs), enterprise nearline systems, video and image HDDs, and network-attached storage drives.