Open Text Co. (NASDAQ:OTEX) Plans Dividend Increase – $0.26 Per Share

Open Text Co. (NASDAQ:OTEX) (TSE:OTC) announced a quarterly dividend on Friday, February 7th,Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, March 7th will be given a dividend of 0.2625 per share by the software maker on Friday, March 21st. This represents a $1.05 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.77%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, March 7th. This is an increase from Open Text’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.26.

Open Text has raised its dividend payment by an average of 6.7% per year over the last three years. Open Text has a payout ratio of 25.2% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Open Text to earn $3.74 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.05 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 28.1%.

Open Text Trading Down 5.7 %

Shares of NASDAQ:OTEX opened at $27.86 on Friday. Open Text has a 1 year low of $26.84 and a 1 year high of $42.17. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $28.90 and its 200-day moving average price is $30.64. The company has a market cap of $7.35 billion, a P/E ratio of 11.33 and a beta of 1.12. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.54, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.79.

Open Text (NASDAQ:OTEX) (TSE:OTC) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 6th. The software maker reported $1.02 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.92 by $0.10. Open Text had a net margin of 12.21% and a return on equity of 23.33%. Sell-side analysts expect that Open Text will post 3.37 earnings per share for the current year.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of equities research analysts have commented on OTEX shares. BMO Capital Markets cut their target price on shares of Open Text from $33.00 to $32.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, November 1st. UBS Group assumed coverage on Open Text in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. They set a “neutral” rating and a $32.00 price objective for the company. TD Securities lowered their target price on Open Text from $40.00 to $38.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, February 3rd. StockNews.com downgraded Open Text from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday, January 27th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada lowered their price objective on shares of Open Text from $33.00 to $31.00 and set a “sector perform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $35.45.

Open Text Company Profile

Open Text Corporation provides information management software and solutions. The company offers content services, which includes content collaboration and intelligent capture to records management, collaboration, e-signatures, and archiving; and operates experience cloud platform that provides customer experience and web content management, digital asset management, customer analytics, AI and insights, e-discovery, digital fax, omnichannel communications, secure messaging, and voice of customer, as well as customer journey, testing, and segmentation.