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

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) announced a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, August 7th, Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, August 21st will be paid a dividend of 0.31 per share by the financial services provider on Wednesday, September 4th. This represents a $1.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.61%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, August 21st.

Assured Guaranty has increased 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 $7.20 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 17.2%.

Assured Guaranty Trading Up 0.1 %

Shares of Assured Guaranty stock opened at $76.87 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.30, a quick ratio of 0.97 and a current ratio of 0.97. Assured Guaranty has a 52 week low of $56.77 and a 52 week high of $96.60. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $78.14 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $80.99. The stock has a market capitalization of $4.19 billion, a PE ratio of 5.94 and a beta of 1.11.

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, beating the consensus estimate of $1.39 by $0.05. The company had revenue of $202.00 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $193.05 million. Assured Guaranty had a return on equity of 12.48% and a net margin of 57.45%. Assured Guaranty’s quarterly revenue was down 43.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $0.60 earnings per share. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Assured Guaranty will post 6.45 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Assured Guaranty news, CEO Dominic Frederico sold 40,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, June 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $78.12, for a total value of $3,124,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 1,410,824 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $110,213,570.88. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Insiders own 5.10% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several research analysts recently issued reports on the company. StockNews.com raised Assured Guaranty from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised Assured Guaranty from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and lifted their target price for the company from $87.00 to $92.00 in a research report on Tuesday, July 9th. Roth Mkm reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $110.00 price objective on shares of Assured Guaranty in a research report on Tuesday, July 9th. Finally, UBS Group cut their price objective on Assured Guaranty from $102.00 to $84.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, August 9th.

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.