Assured Guaranty Ltd. Plans Quarterly Dividend of $0.31 (NYSE:AGO)

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) announced a quarterly dividend on Saturday, November 9th,NASDAQ Dividends reports. Investors of record on Friday, November 22nd will be given a dividend of 0.31 per share by the financial services provider on Friday, December 6th. This represents a $1.24 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.42%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, November 22nd.

Assured Guaranty has raised its dividend by an average of 11.9% annually over the last three years. Assured Guaranty has a payout ratio of 19.6% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Assured Guaranty to earn $6.75 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.24 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 18.4%.

Assured Guaranty Price Performance

Assured Guaranty stock traded up $1.00 during mid-day trading on Friday, hitting $87.53. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 353,338 shares, compared to its average volume of 380,253. The stock has a market capitalization of $4.61 billion, a P/E ratio of 7.12 and a beta of 1.10. Assured Guaranty has a twelve month low of $64.59 and a twelve month high of $96.60. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $82.01 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $79.32. The company has a quick ratio of 0.96, a current ratio of 0.96 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.30.

Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, August 7th. The financial services provider reported $1.44 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.39 by $0.05. The company had revenue of $202.00 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $193.05 million. Assured Guaranty had a return on equity of 13.19% and a net margin of 61.17%. Assured Guaranty’s revenue for the quarter was down 43.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $0.60 earnings per share. Research analysts forecast that Assured Guaranty will post 6.3 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, Director Yukiko Omura sold 3,599 shares of Assured Guaranty stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 26th. The stock was sold at an average price of $79.73, for a total transaction of $286,948.27. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 19,285 shares in the company, valued at $1,537,593.05. The trade was a 0.00 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. In related news, Director Yukiko Omura sold 3,599 shares of Assured Guaranty stock in a transaction on Thursday, September 26th. The shares were sold at an average price of $79.73, for a total value of $286,948.27. Following the completion of the sale, the director now owns 19,285 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,537,593.05. The trade was a 0.00 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, CEO Dominic Frederico sold 31,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $80.01, for a total transaction of $2,480,310.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,380,119 shares in the company, valued at $110,423,321.19. The trade was a 0.00 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 5.10% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research analysts have recently weighed in on AGO shares. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Assured Guaranty from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Friday, October 18th. UBS Group raised their target price on Assured Guaranty from $84.00 to $87.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, October 17th.

About Assured Guaranty

Assured Guaranty Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides credit protection products to public finance, infrastructure, and structured finance markets in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Insurance and Asset Management. The company offers financial guaranty insurance that protects holders of debt instruments and other monetary obligations from defaults in scheduled payments.