The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) Announces $0.38 Quarterly Dividend

The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, March 18th, RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Monday, March 31st will be paid a dividend of 0.38 per share on Monday, April 14th. This represents a $1.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.11%. The ex-dividend date is Monday, March 31st.

Toro has raised its dividend payment by an average of 10.3% annually over the last three years and has raised its dividend annually for the last 21 consecutive years. Toro has a dividend payout ratio of 32.3% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Toro to earn $4.67 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.52 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 32.5%.

Toro Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE:TTC opened at $72.17 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59, a current ratio of 1.81 and a quick ratio of 0.74. The business’s 50 day moving average price is $79.98 and its 200-day moving average price is $82.57. The firm has a market capitalization of $7.20 billion, a PE ratio of 18.00 and a beta of 0.70. Toro has a 1 year low of $71.32 and a 1 year high of $100.93.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, hitting analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.95. The firm had revenue of $1.08 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.09 billion. Toro had a return on equity of 27.25% and a net margin of 9.14%. The business’s revenue was up 9.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $0.71 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Toro will post 4.41 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

TTC has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. StockNews.com lowered Toro from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday. DA Davidson reduced their price objective on Toro from $86.00 to $80.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, March 11th. Robert W. Baird reduced their price objective on Toro from $88.00 to $84.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, March 7th. Raymond James reduced their price objective on Toro from $100.00 to $95.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, December 20th. Finally, Northland Capmk upgraded Toro from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, February 21st. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Toro has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $89.75.

Toro announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback program on Tuesday, December 10th that permits the company to repurchase 4,000,000 outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization permits the company to purchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

About Toro

The Toro Company designs, manufactures, markets, and sells professional turf maintenance equipment and services. It operates through two segments: Professional and Residential. The Professional segment offers turf and landscape equipment products, including sports fields and grounds mowing and maintenance equipment, golf course mowing and maintenance equipment, landscape contractor mowing equipment, landscape creation and renovation equipment, and other maintenance equipment; rental, specialty, and underground construction equipment, such as horizontal directional drills, walk and ride trenchers, stand-on skid steers, vacuum excavators, stump grinders, turf renovation products, asset locators, pipe rehabilitation solutions, materials handling equipment, and other after-market tools; and snow and ice management equipment, such as snowplows, as well as stand-on snow and ice removal equipment, such as snowplow, snow brush, and snow thrower attachments, salt and sand spreaders, and related parts and accessories for light and medium duty trucks, utility task vehicles, skid steers, and front-end loaders.