Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ:STX) Plans $0.72 Quarterly Dividend

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ:STX) announced a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, January 22nd,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, March 19th will be given a dividend of 0.72 per share by the data storage provider on Wednesday, April 2nd. This represents a $2.88 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.66%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, March 19th.

Seagate Technology has increased its dividend by an average of 1.3% annually over the last three years. Seagate Technology has a dividend payout ratio of 30.6% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Seagate Technology to earn $10.79 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.88 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 26.7%.

Seagate Technology Stock Performance

STX traded up $6.93 on Wednesday, reaching $108.18. The company had a trading volume of 9,751,145 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,760,084. The company’s fifty day moving average is $94.32 and its 200 day moving average is $100.28. The stock has a market cap of $22.88 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.25 and a beta of 1.06. Seagate Technology has a fifty-two week low of $82.31 and a fifty-two week high of $115.32.

Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, October 22nd. The data storage provider reported $1.58 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.30 by $0.28. The company had revenue of $2.17 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.13 billion. Seagate Technology had a negative return on equity of 32.19% and a net margin of 11.34%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 49.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned ($0.34) earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Seagate Technology will post 7.18 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research firms have weighed in on STX. UBS Group increased their price objective on Seagate Technology from $95.00 to $105.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on shares of Seagate Technology from $133.00 to $129.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Seagate Technology from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 14th. Rosenblatt Securities increased their target price on shares of Seagate Technology from $140.00 to $150.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday. Finally, Susquehanna lifted their price target on shares of Seagate Technology from $65.00 to $68.00 and gave the company a “negative” rating in a research report on Wednesday. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, six have issued a hold rating and thirteen have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $122.56.

Insider Activity at Seagate Technology

In other Seagate Technology news, Director Jay L. Geldmacher sold 4,100 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, October 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $103.30, for a total transaction of $423,530.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 2,852 shares in the company, valued at approximately $294,611.60. This trade represents a 58.98 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, SVP Kian Fatt Chong sold 9,182 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $105.50, for a total value of $968,701.00. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 54,173 shares of company stock valued at $5,529,679. 0.81% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Seagate Technology Company Profile

Seagate Technology Holdings plc provides data storage technology and solutions in Singapore, the United States, the Netherlands, and internationally. It provides mass capacity storage products, including enterprise nearline hard disk drives (HDDs), enterprise nearline solid state drives (SSDs), enterprise nearline systems, video and image HDDs, and network-attached storage drives.