The board of Abbott Laboratories (ABT, Financial) declared through PR Newswire Friday a dividend increase for the last quarter of the year.
The U.S.-based global health care company headquartered in Lake Bluff, Illinois, will pay 26.5 cents per ordinary share to shareholders of record as of Jan. 13, 2017. The dividend, which represents a 1.9% increase from the prior dividend of 26 cents, will be paid by the company to the shareholders on Feb. 15, 2017.
Abbott is a loyal issuer of a quarterly dividend; it has a long track record of dividends paid to its shareholders since its inception and has been able to increment the portion of earnings that the company distributes to its shareholders for 45 years in a row.
With a liquidity of approximately $4.51 billion in cash on hand, or $3.06 per share, and an annual sales volume of more than $20 billion, the company can effortlessly honor its commitment to the shareholders.
In addition, the company can raise its liquidity with $15.1 billion from the sale of notes which completion was announced about three weeks ago as per a regulatory filing registered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 23.
It must be said that part of this cash money will be used by the company to finance the acquisition of St. Jude Medical (STJ, Financial) in a deal valued approximaely $25 billion.
Concerning the deal with Alere (ALR, Financial), Abbott has announced its decision to end the merger with the provider of diagnostics tests because of “the substantial loss in Alere's value following the merger agreement,” the company says.
Abbott is a member of the Standard & Poor's 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index.
Abbott is trading at $39.31, up 61 cents per share or 1.58% from the previous trading day. The 52-week range is between $36 per share and $46.22 per share.
The stock is more volatile than the stock market (beta = 1.48) and underperformed with 23.02% the S&P 500 year to date.
Abbott has a market capitalization of $57.84 billion and 1.47 billion shares outstanding. The percentage of shares held by insiders is 0.21% and by institutions is 70.50%.
The number of shares available for trading is 1.47 billion. The price-earnings (P/E) ratio (TTM) is 42.89, the EPS (TTM) is 92 cents per share, and the dividend yield is 2.70% and the payout ratio is 154.55%.
The total debt (mrq) is $8.51 billion, and the book value per share (mrq) is $14.11.
In the third quarter, First Eagle Investment (Trades, Portfolio), George Soros (Trades, Portfolio) and Richard Pzena (Trades, Portfolio) reduced their positions by 57.24%, 21.26% and 5.81%.
Joel Greenblatt (Trades, Portfolio) sold out his position while Ken Fisher (Trades, Portfolio) and Mario Gabelli (Trades, Portfolio) increased their positions by 0.39% and 0.07%.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stock mentioned in this article.
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