10-12-2014, 05:17 AM
(10-11-2014, 02:41 PM)EricL Wrote: One thing I like to do when researching companies is to pull up recent quarterly conference call transcripts on Seeking Alpha and then I'll search the text for "dividend" and see the tone that management has when discussing it and see if it is a priority and if there is any guidance to increases or payout ratio.
Good call. I also scan this page a couple times a week and look for green or red text, meaning a dividend was raised or lowered. It's a nice resource to discover random companies that otherwise wouldn't have come up in a screen, but are worth investigating and manually putting on a watchlist for future progress.
(10-11-2014, 05:44 PM)Kerim Wrote: I also usually just visit the company's "investor relations" page. Some are WAY better than others. But I am usually just looking for dividend history and earning history information. It seems like not so many companies have a specific dividend payout policy (like MO's 80 percent payout ratio target) -- or am I overlooking some important information?
You're right, and that's why I was specifically looking for BX's because the payout jumped up and down. CALM is a company I like that has a 40% EPS payout policy so their dividend can fluctuate from quarter to quarter, making screening a bit tougher.