Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) Plans $0.17 Quarterly Dividend

Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) announced a quarterly dividend on Monday, November 18th,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, December 4th will be paid a dividend of 0.17 per share by the oilfield services company on Thursday, December 26th. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.23%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, December 4th.

Halliburton has increased its dividend by an average of 26.7% per year over the last three years. Halliburton has a dividend payout ratio of 21.7% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Halliburton to earn $3.17 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.68 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 21.5%.

Halliburton Stock Up 0.1 %

HAL stock traded up $0.02 during midday trading on Tuesday, reaching $30.47. 9,372,300 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 8,093,597. The company has a quick ratio of 1.62, a current ratio of 2.21 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.74. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $29.18 and its 200-day moving average price is $32.12. Halliburton has a 52 week low of $27.26 and a 52 week high of $41.56. The company has a market cap of $26.77 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 10.61, a P/E/G ratio of 3.64 and a beta of 1.89.

Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 7th. The oilfield services company reported $0.73 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.75 by ($0.02). The company had revenue of $5.70 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.83 billion. Halliburton had a return on equity of 28.33% and a net margin of 11.04%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was down 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.79 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Halliburton will post 3.02 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research firms recently commented on HAL. Benchmark reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $40.00 target price on shares of Halliburton in a research note on Friday, November 8th. Susquehanna reduced their price objective on Halliburton from $42.00 to $40.00 and set a “positive” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, November 8th. Stifel Nicolaus dropped their target price on Halliburton from $45.00 to $42.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, October 11th. The Goldman Sachs Group reduced their price target on shares of Halliburton from $47.00 to $40.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, August 29th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company cut their price objective on shares of Halliburton from $46.00 to $39.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, September 25th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, sixteen have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Halliburton currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $40.74.

About Halliburton

Halliburton Company provides products and services to the energy industry worldwide. It operates through two segments, Completion and Production, and Drilling and Evaluation. The Completion and Production segment offers production enhancement services that include stimulation and sand control services; cementing services, such as well bonding and casing, and casing equipment; and completion tools that offer downhole solutions and services, including well completion products and services, intelligent well completions, and service tools, as well as liner hanger, sand control, and multilateral systems.