STX?

[navyasw02]

In my stock shopping today I came across STX. I'm wondering what the catch is, low PE ratio, 4% dividend, low payout ratio, am I missing some red flags on this?

[daat99]

They (almost) stopped giving dividends in 2009.
They gave 46 cents per share in 2008 and only 3 cents during 2009.
They didn't give any dividends during 2010 at all.

How comfortable are you with dividend investing in a company that proved it will stop giving dividends if it wants (needs?) to?
How can you retire peacefully knowing that part of your dividend pay-check is not secured?

It's true that they had a major issue where their factories suffered some kind of a natural disaster and it was kinda out of their hands.
They did pick up where they left off in 2011 and started to increase the dividends even faster than before the crisis so that's a plus.

The real question you need to ask yourself is if you think they recovered from the disaster without being handicapped by the competitors.

If the answer to those questions are satisfactory to you than this does sounds like a good investment for the long run.

NOTE: I didn't dive into any records besides looking at the dividend history in the dividata website and noticing the latest CCC list doesn't include them.

[rapidacid]

Big fan. Their metrics are great and using my own personal criteria they're the "best" place for me to put my money. However their past is spotty and their future is uncertain so I'm maintaining a position but not throwing gobs of money at them.