Fortis Inc. (TSE:FTS) Increases Dividend to $0.83 Per Share

Fortis Inc. (TSE:FTS) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, September 26th, Zacks reports. Shareholders of record on Monday, November 18th will be given a dividend of 0.83 per share on Sunday, December 1st. This represents a $3.32 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 5.43%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 18th. This is an increase from Fortis’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.59.

Fortis Price Performance

TSE FTS opened at C$61.13 on Friday. Fortis has a 12 month low of C$49.82 and a 12 month high of C$62.29. The stock has a market cap of C$30.27 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.16, a PEG ratio of 2.80 and a beta of 0.22. The company’s 50 day moving average is C$59.33 and its two-hundred day moving average is C$55.77. The company has a current ratio of 0.69, a quick ratio of 0.36 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 128.59.

Fortis (TSE:FTS) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, July 31st. The company reported C$0.67 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of C$0.65 by C$0.02. Fortis had a net margin of 14.35% and a return on equity of 7.44%. The company had revenue of C$2.67 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of C$2.71 billion. As a group, research analysts anticipate that Fortis will post 3.338843 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Fortis news, Senior Officer James Reid sold 19,972 shares of Fortis stock in a transaction on Friday, August 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of C$59.46, for a total transaction of C$1,187,493.18. 0.04% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

FTS has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Bank of America set a C$60.00 price objective on shares of Fortis and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research report on Friday, September 20th. UBS Group upgraded shares of Fortis to a “strong sell” rating in a research report on Tuesday, September 10th. CIBC lifted their price objective on shares of Fortis from C$57.00 to C$59.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, August 1st. BMO Capital Markets lifted their price objective on shares of Fortis from C$59.00 to C$61.00 in a research report on Thursday, September 5th. Finally, National Bankshares lifted their price objective on shares of Fortis from C$56.00 to C$62.00 and gave the company a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Friday, August 23rd. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have issued a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Fortis has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of C$60.10.

Fortis Company Profile

Fortis Inc operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 447,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 103,000 retail customers in Arizona’s Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,408 megawatts (MW), including 68 MW of solar capacity and 250 MV of wind capacity.