The board of directors of Amgen Inc. (AMGN, Financial) authorized the payment of the quarterly dividend for the last quarter of fiscal 2017.
Shareholders of Amgen were informed via the company’s website Oct. 24.
For the last quarter of fiscal 2017, the U.S. global biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California, will pay its shareholders a cash dividend of $1.15 per share of Amgen.
Amgen will pay the last quarterly dividend for fiscal 2017 on Dec. 8 to its shareholders of record as of Nov. 17. The ex-dividend date is scheduled for Nov. 16.
The quarterly dividend of $1.15 is in line with the previous one and if it is held constant by the U.S. biopharmaceutical company for the next three quarters, it will lead to a forward dividend of $4.60 and a yield of 2.51% according to the current market value of Amgen on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
With the last quarterly dividend, Amgen will distribute an annual dividend of $4.60 for a dividend yield of 2.51%, which is 3,350 basis points higher than the Standard & Poor's 500 dividend yield of 1.88%.
Amgen is currently trading at $180.37 on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The biopharma stock closed 16 cents down Tuesday from the previous trading day or -0.09% with a total volume of 3,449,844 shares traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange versus an average volume of about 2.9 million shares traded on the stock market over the last 10 trading days and versus a volume of 2.53 million shares traded over the last three months.
Over the last 10 trading days Amgen lost 2.92% on the Nasdaq while over the last three months the U.S. pharma stock lost nearly 0.4%. Year to date Amgen gained 23.35% and outperformed the S&P 500 by 8.5%.
The U.S. international biopharma company is distributing part of its free cash flow to the shareholders according to a 39.16% pay-out ratio.
Amgen was scheduled to announce its earnings for the third quarter of fiscal 2017 after market close Oct. 25.
For the quarter, analysts expect Amgen will close its quarterly financial statement with an EPS of $3.11. This is a mean of 20 estimates and represents a 9% increase from the year-ago quarter.
Concerning revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2017, an average figure for third-quarter revenue of $5.76 billion has been computed based on 17 analysts’ estimates. This is nearly flat year over year. In the same quarter of one year ago, Amgen reported a quarterly revenue of $5.81 billion.
Amgen has a market capitalization of $131.61 billion, a price-book (P/B) ratio of 4.19, a price-sales (P/S) ratio of 5.82 and a price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 16.41. The forward P/E ratio is 14.01 that, multiplied by a weighted (quarters) average of $12.70 for full fiscal years 2017 and 2018, yields to a value of $177.96 per share of Amgen. The average target price is $190.45 per share, and the recommendation rating is 2.4 out of 5.
Disclosure: I have no position in Amgen.
