Celanese Co. (NYSE:CE) Announces $0.70 Quarterly Dividend

Celanese Co. (NYSE:CE) announced a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, July 17th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, July 30th will be given a dividend of 0.70 per share by the basic materials company on Monday, August 12th. This represents a $2.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.01%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, July 30th.

Celanese has increased its dividend by an average of 4.1% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 14 years. Celanese has a payout ratio of 20.5% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Celanese to earn $13.56 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 20.6%.

Celanese Stock Up 1.6 %

CE stock opened at $139.08 on Monday. The firm’s fifty day moving average is $142.23 and its 200 day moving average is $150.62. The firm has a market cap of $15.19 billion, a PE ratio of 7.65, a P/E/G ratio of 0.60 and a beta of 1.30. Celanese has a one year low of $110.76 and a one year high of $172.16. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.46, a quick ratio of 0.73 and a current ratio of 1.21.

Celanese (NYSE:CE) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 8th. The basic materials company reported $2.08 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.91 by $0.17. The company had revenue of $2.61 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.67 billion. Celanese had a return on equity of 14.00% and a net margin of 18.60%. Celanese’s revenue for the quarter was down 8.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $2.01 earnings per share. On average, research analysts forecast that Celanese will post 11.26 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

CE has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Barclays lowered shares of Celanese from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating and set a $170.00 target price on the stock. in a research report on Thursday, April 4th. Royal Bank of Canada increased their target price on Celanese from $171.00 to $176.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Monday, May 13th. UBS Group decreased their target price on Celanese from $193.00 to $184.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, July 9th. KeyCorp dropped their price target on Celanese from $190.00 to $180.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, July 10th. Finally, Bank of America decreased their price objective on Celanese from $147.00 to $144.00 and set an “underperform” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, June 10th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have given a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $162.75.

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.