Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc. Declares Quarterly Dividend of $0.18 (NYSE:BHLB)

Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE:BHLB) declared a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, September 17th, NASDAQ reports. Stockholders of record on Monday, September 30th will be paid a dividend of 0.18 per share by the savings and loans company on Thursday, October 10th. This represents a $0.72 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.64%. The ex-dividend date is Monday, September 30th.

Berkshire Hills Bancorp has a dividend payout ratio of 30.1% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Berkshire Hills Bancorp to earn $2.37 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.72 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 30.4%.

Berkshire Hills Bancorp Price Performance

Shares of BHLB stock traded up $0.04 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $27.28. The company had a trading volume of 295,221 shares, compared to its average volume of 254,158. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $26.43 and its 200-day moving average price is $23.57. Berkshire Hills Bancorp has a 52-week low of $18.31 and a 52-week high of $28.51. The company has a market capitalization of $1.18 billion, a P/E ratio of 54.48 and a beta of 0.86. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28, a current ratio of 1.01 and a quick ratio of 1.01.

Berkshire Hills Bancorp (NYSE:BHLB) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, July 18th. The savings and loans company reported $0.55 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.52 by $0.03. Berkshire Hills Bancorp had a net margin of 3.37% and a return on equity of 8.61%. The firm had revenue of $174.24 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $108.46 million. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $0.55 EPS. Equities research analysts forecast that Berkshire Hills Bancorp will post 2.1 earnings per share for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. Janney Montgomery Scott cut shares of Berkshire Hills Bancorp from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $28.00 target price for the company. in a research report on Monday, July 22nd. StockNews.com raised Berkshire Hills Bancorp from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, July 24th. Finally, Hovde Group upped their price objective on shares of Berkshire Hills Bancorp from $28.00 to $31.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday, July 19th. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and one has assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Berkshire Hills Bancorp currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $26.80.

About Berkshire Hills Bancorp

Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc operates as the bank holding company for Berkshire Bank that provides various banking products and services in the United States. The company provides various deposit accounts, including demand deposit, interest-bearing checking, regular savings, money market savings, time certificates of deposit, and retirement deposit accounts.