The Toro Company Plans Quarterly Dividend of $0.38 (NYSE:TTC)

The Toro Company (NYSE:TTC) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, March 18th, RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Monday, March 31st will be given a dividend of 0.38 per share on Monday, April 14th. This represents a $1.52 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.09%.

Toro has raised its dividend by an average of 10.3% per year over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 21 years. Toro has a payout ratio of 32.3% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Toro to earn $4.67 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.52 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 32.5%.

Toro Trading Down 0.6 %

Shares of TTC traded down $0.42 during trading hours on Tuesday, hitting $72.80. 778,299 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 907,678. Toro has a fifty-two week low of $71.03 and a fifty-two week high of $100.93. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.59, a current ratio of 1.81 and a quick ratio of 0.74. The business has a 50-day moving average of $80.23 and a 200-day moving average of $82.79. The firm has a market capitalization of $7.27 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.16 and a beta of 0.70.

Toro (NYSE:TTC) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, December 18th. The company reported $0.95 earnings per share for the quarter, hitting the consensus estimate of $0.95. Toro had a net margin of 9.14% and a return on equity of 27.25%. The company had revenue of $1.08 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.09 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $0.71 earnings per share. Toro’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, research analysts expect that Toro will post 4.41 EPS for the current year.

Toro announced that its board has authorized a stock buyback program on Tuesday, December 10th that permits the company to buyback 4,000,000 shares. This buyback authorization permits the company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are usually an indication that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities research analysts have recently weighed in on TTC shares. Robert W. Baird decreased their price objective on shares of Toro from $88.00 to $84.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, March 7th. DA Davidson reduced their price target on shares of Toro from $86.00 to $80.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, March 11th. Northland Capmk upgraded shares of Toro from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Friday, February 21st. Raymond James reduced their price objective on shares of Toro from $100.00 to $95.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Friday, December 20th. Finally, StockNews.com cut shares of Toro from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $89.75.

Toro Company Profile

The Toro Company designs, manufactures, markets, and sells professional turf maintenance equipment and services. It operates through two segments: Professional and Residential. The Professional segment offers turf and landscape equipment products, including sports fields and grounds mowing and maintenance equipment, golf course mowing and maintenance equipment, landscape contractor mowing equipment, landscape creation and renovation equipment, and other maintenance equipment; rental, specialty, and underground construction equipment, such as horizontal directional drills, walk and ride trenchers, stand-on skid steers, vacuum excavators, stump grinders, turf renovation products, asset locators, pipe rehabilitation solutions, materials handling equipment, and other after-market tools; and snow and ice management equipment, such as snowplows, as well as stand-on snow and ice removal equipment, such as snowplow, snow brush, and snow thrower attachments, salt and sand spreaders, and related parts and accessories for light and medium duty trucks, utility task vehicles, skid steers, and front-end loaders.