The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.38

The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, March 18th, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Monday, March 31st will be given a dividend of 0.38 per share on Monday, April 14th. This represents a $1.52 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.09%.

Toro has increased its dividend payment by an average of 10.3% per year over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 21 years. Toro has a payout ratio of 32.3% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Toro to earn $4.67 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.52 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 32.5%.

Toro Price Performance

Shares of NYSE TTC traded down $0.42 during trading hours on Tuesday, hitting $72.80. 778,299 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 907,678. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59, a quick ratio of 0.74 and a current ratio of 1.81. The company has a market cap of $7.27 billion, a PE ratio of 18.16 and a beta of 0.70. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $80.23 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $82.79. Toro has a 1-year low of $71.03 and a 1-year high of $100.93.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of $0.95. The business had revenue of $1.08 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.09 billion. Toro had a net margin of 9.14% and a return on equity of 27.25%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $0.71 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Toro will post 4.41 EPS for the current year.

Toro announced that its board has initiated a stock buyback program on Tuesday, December 10th that permits the company to buyback 4,000,000 outstanding shares. This buyback authorization permits the company to reacquire shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are often a sign that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts recently issued reports on TTC shares. Northland Capmk upgraded shares of Toro from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. Raymond James dropped their price objective on shares of Toro from $100.00 to $95.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, December 20th. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Toro from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday. DA Davidson dropped their price objective on shares of Toro from $86.00 to $80.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, March 11th. Finally, Northland Securities raised shares of Toro from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $100.00 price objective for the company in a research note on Monday, February 24th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $89.75.

Toro Company Profile

The Toro Company designs, manufactures, markets, and sells professional turf maintenance equipment and services. It operates through two segments: Professional and Residential. The Professional segment offers turf and landscape equipment products, including sports fields and grounds mowing and maintenance equipment, golf course mowing and maintenance equipment, landscape contractor mowing equipment, landscape creation and renovation equipment, and other maintenance equipment; rental, specialty, and underground construction equipment, such as horizontal directional drills, walk and ride trenchers, stand-on skid steers, vacuum excavators, stump grinders, turf renovation products, asset locators, pipe rehabilitation solutions, materials handling equipment, and other after-market tools; and snow and ice management equipment, such as snowplows, as well as stand-on snow and ice removal equipment, such as snowplow, snow brush, and snow thrower attachments, salt and sand spreaders, and related parts and accessories for light and medium duty trucks, utility task vehicles, skid steers, and front-end loaders.