American Express to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.70 (NYSE:AXP)

American Express (NYSE:AXP) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, December 12th,RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, January 3rd will be given a dividend of 0.70 per share by the payment services company on Monday, February 10th. This represents a $2.80 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.93%.

American Express has raised its dividend by an average of 10.5% annually over the last three years. American Express has a dividend payout ratio of 18.5% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect American Express to earn $15.16 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.80 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 18.5%.

American Express Trading Down 0.7 %

NYSE:AXP opened at $300.29 on Friday. American Express has a 1 year low of $170.15 and a 1 year high of $307.82. The stock has a market cap of $211.54 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.10, a PEG ratio of 1.73 and a beta of 1.23. The business has a fifty day moving average of $285.93 and a 200-day moving average of $259.21. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.80, a quick ratio of 1.63 and a current ratio of 1.63.

American Express (NYSE:AXP) last released its quarterly earnings results on Friday, October 18th. The payment services company reported $3.49 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.27 by $0.22. American Express had a return on equity of 32.46% and a net margin of 15.32%. The company had revenue of $16.64 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.68 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $3.30 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 8.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities analysts predict that American Express will post 13.4 earnings per share for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages recently weighed in on AXP. BTIG Research cut American Express from a “neutral” rating to a “sell” rating and set a $230.00 target price for the company. in a research note on Tuesday, October 8th. Hsbc Global Res cut American Express from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 8th. HSBC cut American Express from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating and raised their target price for the company from $265.00 to $270.00 in a research note on Tuesday, October 8th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods raised their target price on American Express from $325.00 to $350.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday. Finally, Morgan Stanley upped their target price on American Express from $248.00 to $252.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Monday, October 21st. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, thirteen have assigned a hold rating and nine have given a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, American Express has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $259.45.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, insider Anre D. Williams sold 77,887 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, October 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $270.26, for a total transaction of $21,049,740.62. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now directly owns 111,656 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $30,176,150.56. This trade represents a 41.09 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CFO Caillec Christophe Le sold 6,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, November 27th. The stock was sold at an average price of $303.48, for a total value of $1,820,880.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 6,433 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,952,286.84. This trade represents a 48.26 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 96,998 shares of company stock valued at $26,423,439. Corporate insiders own 0.12% of the company’s stock.

American Express Company Profile

American Express Company, together with its subsidiaries, operates as integrated payments company in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the Asia Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Canada, the Caribbean, and Internationally. It operates through four segments: U.S. Consumer Services, Commercial Services, International Card Services, and Global Merchant and Network Services.