Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) Announces Monthly Dividend of $0.05

Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) declared a monthly dividend on Tuesday, November 5th,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 27th will be given a dividend of 0.045 per share by the financial services provider on Wednesday, January 22nd. This represents a $0.54 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 12.39%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, December 27th.

Prospect Capital has increased its dividend by an average of 13.6% per year over the last three years. Prospect Capital has a dividend payout ratio of 100.0% meaning its dividend is currently covered by earnings, but may not be in the future if the company’s earnings tumble.

Prospect Capital Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ PSEC opened at $4.36 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 0.48, a quick ratio of 0.48 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.65. The stock has a market cap of $1.90 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -16.77 and a beta of 0.97. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $4.75 and its 200 day moving average price is $5.13. Prospect Capital has a 52 week low of $4.09 and a 52 week high of $6.26.

Prospect Capital (NASDAQ:PSEC) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Friday, November 8th. The financial services provider reported $0.21 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.04. Prospect Capital had a negative net margin of 2.23% and a positive return on equity of 12.19%. The business had revenue of $196.31 million during the quarter.

Analyst Ratings Changes

PSEC has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Wells Fargo & Company dropped their price objective on Prospect Capital from $5.00 to $4.50 and set an “underweight” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, August 30th. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Prospect Capital from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday, December 6th.

Insider Transactions at Prospect Capital

In related news, CEO John F. Barry bought 1,000,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 20th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $4.59 per share, with a total value of $4,590,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 75,465,285 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $346,385,658.15. The trade was a 1.34 % increase in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, COO M Grier Eliasek purchased 210,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 29th. The shares were bought at an average cost of $4.81 per share, with a total value of $1,010,100.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer now directly owns 2,131,130 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $10,250,735.30. The trade was a 10.93 % increase in their position. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders have acquired 3,273,173 shares of company stock worth $15,121,420 over the last quarter. 27.10% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Prospect Capital Company Profile

Prospect Capital Corporation is a business development company. It specializes in middle market, mature, mezzanine finance, later stage, emerging growth, leveraged buyouts, refinancing, acquisitions, recapitalizations, turnaround, growth capital, development, capital expenditures and subordinated debt tranches of collateralized loan obligations, cash flow term loans, market place lending and bridge transactions.