American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE:AWK) Increases Dividend to $0.77 Per Share

American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE:AWK) announced a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, May 1st, RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, May 14th will be given a dividend of 0.765 per share by the utilities provider on Monday, June 3rd. This represents a $3.06 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.45%. This is a boost from American Water Works’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.71.

American Water Works has increased its dividend by an average of 8.9% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 16 years. American Water Works has a payout ratio of 49.8% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect American Water Works to earn $5.68 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.83 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 49.8%.

American Water Works Trading Up 2.3 %

Shares of AWK opened at $125.12 on Thursday. The business has a 50-day moving average of $119.21 and a 200 day moving average of $124.27. American Water Works has a fifty-two week low of $113.34 and a fifty-two week high of $151.24. The firm has a market cap of $24.38 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.59, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.92 and a beta of 0.62. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.20, a quick ratio of 0.59 and a current ratio of 0.65.

American Water Works (NYSE:AWK) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 15th. The utilities provider reported $0.88 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.84 by $0.04. American Water Works had a return on equity of 9.70% and a net margin of 22.30%. The company had revenue of $1.03 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.02 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.81 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.8% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts forecast that American Water Works will post 5.24 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at American Water Works

In other American Water Works news, EVP Melanie M. Kennedy sold 843 shares of American Water Works stock in a transaction dated Monday, March 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $119.59, for a total transaction of $100,814.37. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 16,240 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,942,141.60. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Insiders own 0.08% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

AWK has been the subject of several recent research reports. StockNews.com lowered American Water Works from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, April 3rd. Evercore ISI lowered American Water Works from an “outperform” rating to an “in-line” rating and reduced their target price for the company from $160.00 to $135.00 in a report on Friday, February 16th.

About American Water Works

American Water Works Company, Inc, through its subsidiaries, provides water and wastewater services in the United States. It offers water and wastewater services to approximately 1,700 communities in 14 states serving approximately 3.5 million active customers. The company serves residential customers; commercial customers, including food and beverage providers, commercial property developers and proprietors, and energy suppliers; fire service and private fire customers; industrial customers, such as large-scale manufacturers, mining, and production operations; public authorities comprising government buildings and other public sector facilities, such as schools and universities; and other utilities and community water and wastewater systems.