TransAlta Co. (TAC) To Go Ex-Dividend on May 30th

TransAlta Co. (NYSE:TAC) (TSE:TA) declared a quarterly dividend on Friday, February 21st, Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Sunday, June 1st will be given a dividend of 0.0458 per share by the utilities provider on Tuesday, July 1st. This represents a $0.18 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.68%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, May 30th. This is a positive change from TransAlta’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.04.

TransAlta has increased its dividend by an average of 8.8% annually over the last three years. TransAlta has a payout ratio of 106.3% indicating that the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments. Analysts expect TransAlta to earn $0.44 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.17 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 38.6%.

TransAlta Stock Down 3.6 %

TAC stock opened at $10.88 on Friday. TransAlta has a twelve month low of $5.94 and a twelve month high of $14.64. The company has a quick ratio of 0.67, a current ratio of 0.74 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.94. The firm has a market cap of $3.24 billion, a PE ratio of 26.53 and a beta of 0.83. The business has a 50 day moving average of $12.65 and a 200 day moving average of $10.98.

TransAlta (NYSE:TAC) (TSE:TA) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 20th. The utilities provider reported ($0.16) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.12 by ($0.28). TransAlta had a net margin of 6.38% and a return on equity of 18.47%. The company had revenue of $484.60 million for the quarter. On average, research analysts forecast that TransAlta will post 0.41 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms recently weighed in on TAC. CIBC raised TransAlta from a “neutral” rating to an “outperformer” rating and reduced their price objective for the company from $23.00 to $19.50 in a research report on Tuesday, February 18th. Cibc World Mkts raised TransAlta from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, February 18th. Scotiabank lowered TransAlta from a “sector outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 23rd. StockNews.com lowered TransAlta from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday. Finally, Desjardins reissued a “hold” rating on shares of TransAlta in a report on Wednesday, November 6th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $19.50.

TransAlta Company Profile

TransAlta Corporation engages in the development, production, and sale of electric energy. It operates through Hydro, Wind and Solar, Gas, Energy Transition, and Energy Marketing segments. The Hydro segment holds interest of approximately 922 megawatts (MW) of owned hydroelectric generating capacity located in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario.