PriceSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ:PSMT) Plans Semi-annual Dividend of $0.63

PriceSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ:PSMT) announced a semi-annual dividend on Tuesday, February 11th,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, August 15th will be paid a dividend of 0.63 per share on Friday, August 29th. This represents a dividend yield of 1.2%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, August 15th.

PriceSmart has increased its dividend payment by an average of 18.3% per year over the last three years. PriceSmart has a dividend payout ratio of 20.1% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings.

PriceSmart Stock Down 0.0 %

Shares of PriceSmart stock opened at $94.85 on Wednesday. PriceSmart has a 1 year low of $77.51 and a 1 year high of $99.23. The firm has a market cap of $2.91 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.90 and a beta of 0.85. The company has a 50-day moving average of $92.10 and a 200 day moving average of $89.93. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.08, a current ratio of 1.26 and a quick ratio of 0.43.

PriceSmart (NASDAQ:PSMT) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, January 8th. The company reported $1.21 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.43 by ($0.22). The company had revenue of $1.26 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.24 billion. PriceSmart had a net margin of 2.76% and a return on equity of 12.29%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 7.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business earned $1.24 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that PriceSmart will post 5.28 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other PriceSmart news, COO John D. Hildebrandt sold 580 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, January 27th. The stock was sold at an average price of $92.40, for a total value of $53,592.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer now owns 858 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $79,279.20. This represents a 40.33 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, Director Jeffrey Fisher sold 5,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, January 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $93.00, for a total value of $465,000.00. Following the sale, the director now owns 18,611 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,730,823. This represents a 21.18 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders sold 19,262 shares of company stock valued at $1,749,898. Corporate insiders own 17.10% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Separately, StockNews.com cut shares of PriceSmart from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday.

About PriceSmart

PriceSmart, Inc owns and operates U.S.-style membership shopping warehouse clubs in the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, and Colombia. The company provides basic and private label consumer products under the Member's Selection brand, including groceries, cleaning supplies, health and beauty aids, meat, produce, deli, seafood, and poultry.