Targa Resources Corp. to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.75 (NYSE:TRGP)

Targa Resources Corp. (NYSE:TRGP) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, January 16th,RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, January 31st will be given a dividend of 0.75 per share by the pipeline company on Friday, February 14th. This represents a $3.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.41%.

Targa Resources has increased its dividend by an average of 90.2% per year over the last three years. Targa Resources has a payout ratio of 31.9% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Targa Resources to earn $8.15 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $3.00 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 36.8%.

Targa Resources Price Performance

Shares of TRGP stock traded up $7.01 during mid-day trading on Thursday, hitting $212.51. 1,908,640 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 1,524,464. Targa Resources has a twelve month low of $81.03 and a twelve month high of $212.98. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.05, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a current ratio of 0.77. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $191.09 and its 200-day simple moving average is $162.91. The firm has a market cap of $46.34 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 38.43, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.59 and a beta of 2.30.

Targa Resources (NYSE:TRGP) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, November 5th. The pipeline company reported $1.75 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.58 by $0.17. Targa Resources had a return on equity of 27.59% and a net margin of 7.65%. The firm had revenue of $3.85 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.24 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.97 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Targa Resources will post 6.4 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Targa Resources news, CAO Julie H. Boushka sold 3,260 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $190.74, for a total value of $621,812.40. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 35,143 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $6,703,175.82. The trade was a 8.49 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, insider D. Scott Pryor sold 30,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $190.33, for a total value of $5,709,900.00. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 82,979 shares in the company, valued at approximately $15,793,393.07. This represents a 26.55 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 1.44% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on TRGP. Stifel Nicolaus boosted their target price on Targa Resources from $190.00 to $224.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 20th. Bank of America started coverage on shares of Targa Resources in a research report on Thursday, October 17th. They set a “buy” rating and a $182.00 price objective on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada boosted their target price on shares of Targa Resources from $172.00 to $199.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday, November 11th. Wells Fargo & Company upped their price target on Targa Resources from $190.00 to $204.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 18th. Finally, UBS Group raised their price objective on Targa Resources from $182.00 to $246.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 15th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, thirteen have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $189.21.

Targa Resources Company Profile

Targa Resources Corp., together with its subsidiary, Targa Resources Partners LP, owns, operates, acquires, and develops a portfolio of complementary domestic midstream infrastructure assets in North America. It operates in two segments, Gathering and Processing, and Logistics and Transportation. The company is involved in gathering, compressing, treating, processing, transporting, and selling natural gas; storing, fractionating, treating, transporting, and selling natural gas liquids (NGL) and NGL products, including services to liquefied petroleum gas exporters; and gathering, storing, terminaling, purchasing, and selling crude oil.