Black Hills Co. (NYSE:BKH) Announces $0.65 Quarterly Dividend

Black Hills Co. (NYSE:BKH) announced a quarterly dividend on Monday, April 22nd, Zacks reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, May 17th will be paid a dividend of 0.65 per share by the utilities provider on Saturday, June 1st. This represents a $2.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.80%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, May 16th.

Black Hills has increased its dividend by an average of 4.8% per year over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 1 years. Black Hills has a payout ratio of 63.1% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings.

Black Hills Price Performance

Shares of NYSE BKH traded down $0.25 on Wednesday, hitting $54.12. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 29,418 shares, compared to its average volume of 540,660. Black Hills has a 12-month low of $46.43 and a 12-month high of $66.85. The company has a market capitalization of $3.70 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 13.87 and a beta of 0.64. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.15, a current ratio of 0.70 and a quick ratio of 0.56. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $52.79 and a 200-day moving average of $52.18.

Black Hills (NYSE:BKH) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 8th. The utilities provider reported $1.17 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.06 by $0.11. The company had revenue of $591.70 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $863.67 million. Black Hills had a net margin of 11.25% and a return on equity of 8.09%. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.11 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts predict that Black Hills will post 3.9 EPS for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several brokerages recently issued reports on BKH. Scotiabank reduced their price objective on shares of Black Hills from $58.00 to $54.00 and set a “sector perform” rating on the stock in a research note on Monday. Royal Bank of Canada dropped their price target on shares of Black Hills from $61.00 to $57.00 and set a “sector perform” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, February 9th. Finally, StockNews.com lowered shares of Black Hills from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a research report on Thursday, March 28th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and four have given a hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $55.00.

About Black Hills

Black Hills Corporation, through its subsidiaries, operates as an electric and natural gas utility company in the United States. The company operates in two segments: Electric Utilities and Gas Utilities. The Electric Utilities segment generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 222,000 electric utility customers in Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming; and owns and operates 1,394 megawatts of generation capacity and 9,106 miles of electric transmission and distribution lines.