Garmin Ltd. (GRMN) To Go Ex-Dividend on December 13th

Garmin Ltd. (NYSE:GRMN) announced a quarterly dividend on Friday, February 23rd,Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, December 13th will be given a dividend of 0.75 per share by the scientific and technical instruments company on Friday, December 27th. This represents a $3.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.37%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, December 13th.

Garmin has raised its dividend by an average of 6.8% annually over the last three years. Garmin has a payout ratio of 39.1% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Garmin to earn $7.66 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $3.00 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 39.2%.

Garmin Stock Down 0.0 %

GRMN stock opened at $219.29 on Wednesday. The stock has a market cap of $42.11 billion, a PE ratio of 27.83, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.44 and a beta of 0.97. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $191.84 and its 200 day simple moving average is $177.56. Garmin has a fifty-two week low of $119.15 and a fifty-two week high of $220.78.

Garmin (NYSE:GRMN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 30th. The scientific and technical instruments company reported $1.99 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.46 by $0.53. Garmin had a return on equity of 17.99% and a net margin of 25.48%. The company had revenue of $1.59 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.44 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $1.41 earnings per share. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 24.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities analysts forecast that Garmin will post 7.01 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Transactions at Garmin

In other news, Director Sean Biddlecombe sold 587 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $210.10, for a total transaction of $123,328.70. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 6,147 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,291,484.70. This represents a 8.72 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 19.54% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages have recently commented on GRMN. Barclays raised their price target on Garmin from $133.00 to $158.00 and gave the company an “underweight” rating in a report on Friday, November 1st. Morgan Stanley downgraded shares of Garmin from an “equal weight” rating to an “underweight” rating and dropped their price target for the stock from $155.00 to $138.00 in a research report on Monday, October 7th. Tigress Financial increased their price objective on shares of Garmin from $210.00 to $215.00 and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Thursday, September 19th. Finally, StockNews.com cut Garmin from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Thursday, September 12th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $162.67.

About Garmin

Garmin Ltd. designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes a range of wireless devices worldwide. Its Fitness segment offers running and multi-sport watches; cycling products; smartwatch devices; scales and monitors; and fitness accessories. This segment also provides Garmin Connect and Garmin Connect Mobile, which are web and mobile platforms where users can track and analyze their fitness, activities and workouts, and wellness data; and Connect IQ, an application development platform.