Garmin Ltd. Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.90 (NYSE:GRMN)

Garmin Ltd. (NYSE:GRMN) announced a quarterly dividend on Friday, February 21st, Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Friday, March 13th will be paid a dividend of 0.90 per share by the scientific and technical instruments company on Friday, March 27th. This represents a $3.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.60%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, March 13th.

Garmin has increased its dividend by an average of 4.4% annually over the last three years. Garmin has a payout ratio of 37.2% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Garmin to earn $7.98 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 37.6%.

Garmin Stock Down 1.9 %

Shares of Garmin stock opened at $224.67 on Friday. Garmin has a twelve month low of $131.20 and a twelve month high of $246.50. The stock has a market cap of $43.23 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.73, a P/E/G ratio of 1.36 and a beta of 0.98. The company’s fifty day moving average is $213.24 and its 200 day moving average is $195.07.

Garmin (NYSE:GRMN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, February 19th. The scientific and technical instruments company reported $2.41 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.90 by $0.51. Garmin had a net margin of 22.42% and a return on equity of 19.31%. The business had revenue of $1.82 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.70 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $1.72 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 22.9% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Garmin will post 7.8 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms recently weighed in on GRMN. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Garmin to a “sell” rating and upped their target price for the stock from $164.00 to $171.00 in a report on Tuesday, February 11th. Barclays upped their price objective on shares of Garmin from $158.00 to $188.00 and gave the stock an “underweight” rating in a research report on Thursday. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their price objective on shares of Garmin from $219.00 to $260.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday. Finally, Tigress Financial upped their price objective on shares of Garmin from $215.00 to $265.00 and gave the stock a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, December 16th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Garmin presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $195.67.

Insider Activity

In other news, CFO Douglas G. Boessen sold 1,761 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, December 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $207.99, for a total transaction of $366,270.39. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 27,612 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $5,743,019.88. This represents a 6.00 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Insiders own 19.54% of the company’s stock.

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.