Ball Co. (NYSE:BALL) Announces $0.20 Quarterly Dividend

Ball Co. (NYSE:BALL) announced a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, April 24th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 3rd will be given a dividend of 0.20 per share on Monday, June 17th. This represents a $0.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.23%.

Ball has raised its dividend by an average of 10.1% annually over the last three years. Ball has a dividend payout ratio of 23.4% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Ball to earn $3.48 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.80 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 23.0%.

Ball Stock Down 0.5 %

Ball stock traded down $0.32 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, reaching $65.18. 1,901,847 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,824,852. The business has a fifty day moving average of $64.84 and a 200 day moving average of $57.68. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.96, a quick ratio of 0.54 and a current ratio of 0.79. The firm has a market cap of $20.57 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.96, a PEG ratio of 4.23 and a beta of 0.89. Ball has a 12-month low of $42.81 and a 12-month high of $67.97.

Ball (NYSE:BALL) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, February 1st. The company reported $0.78 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.77 by $0.01. Ball had a return on equity of 23.81% and a net margin of 5.04%. The firm had revenue of $3.40 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.56 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $0.44 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter was down 4.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts anticipate that Ball will post 3.09 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at Ball

In other Ball news, insider Daniel William Fisher bought 3,869 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Thursday, March 14th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $64.56 per share, with a total value of $249,782.64. Following the purchase, the insider now directly owns 111,866 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,222,068.96. The acquisition was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. 0.81% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts recently issued reports on the company. Mizuho upped their target price on Ball to $63.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, February 20th. Wolfe Research assumed coverage on Ball in a research report on Friday, March 1st. They issued a “peer perform” rating on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada raised Ball from a “sector perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and upped their target price for the company from $61.00 to $74.00 in a research report on Tuesday, February 20th. TheStreet raised Ball from a “c+” rating to a “b-” rating in a research report on Friday, March 8th. Finally, UBS Group began coverage on Ball in a research report on Tuesday, January 16th. They set a “sell” rating and a $55.00 price target on the stock. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have given a hold rating and three have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Ball currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $65.58.

Ball Company Profile

Ball Corporation supplies aluminum packaging products for the beverage, personal care, and household products industries in the United States, Brazil, and internationally. The company manufactures and sells aluminum beverage containers to fillers of carbonated soft drinks, beer, energy drinks, and other beverages.