Celanese Co. to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.03 (NYSE:CE)

Celanese Co. (NYSE:CE) declared a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, February 12th,RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, February 25th will be paid a dividend of 0.03 per share by the basic materials company on Monday, March 31st. This represents a $0.12 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.18%.

Celanese has increased its dividend by an average of 1.0% annually over the last three years. Celanese has a dividend payout ratio of 26.7% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Celanese to earn $8.79 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.80 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 31.9%.

Celanese Stock Performance

CE opened at $66.41 on Thursday. Celanese has a 1-year low of $64.05 and a 1-year high of $172.16. The company has a market capitalization of $7.26 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 6.68, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.37 and a beta of 1.17. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $69.38 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $100.52. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.37 and a quick ratio of 0.76.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages have commented on CE. Royal Bank of Canada dropped their price target on shares of Celanese from $122.00 to $88.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, December 19th. Mizuho dropped their target price on shares of Celanese from $120.00 to $86.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, December 5th. Bank of America upgraded shares of Celanese from an “underperform” rating to a “buy” rating and reduced their target price for the stock from $95.00 to $88.00 in a report on Tuesday, January 14th. UBS Group lowered shares of Celanese from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and decreased their price target for the stock from $161.00 to $97.00 in a research report on Monday, November 11th. Finally, Citigroup cut their price objective on Celanese from $100.00 to $73.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 18th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have issued a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Celanese presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $102.06.

About Celanese

Celanese Corporation, a chemical and specialty materials company, manufactures and sells high performance engineered polymers in the United States and internationally. It operates through Engineered Materials and Acetyl Chain. The Engineered Materials segment develops, produces, and supplies specialty polymers for automotive and medical applications, as well as for use in industrial products and consumer electronics.