Open Text Co. (NASDAQ:OTEX) Raises Dividend to $0.44 Per Share

Open Text Co. (NASDAQ:OTEX) (TSE:OTC) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, May 2nd, Zacks reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, May 31st will be paid a dividend of 0.435 per share by the software maker on Tuesday, June 18th. This represents a $1.74 annualized dividend and a yield of 5.75%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, May 31st. This is an increase from Open Text’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.25.

Open Text has increased its dividend payment by an average of 10.5% per year over the last three years and has raised its dividend annually for the last 1 consecutive years. Open Text has a dividend payout ratio of 19.5% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Open Text to earn $4.50 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.00 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 22.2%.

Open Text Stock Down 14.7 %

Shares of OTEX stock traded down $5.22 during trading hours on Friday, hitting $30.25. 3,706,318 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 728,893. The stock’s fifty day simple moving average is $37.32 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $38.70. Open Text has a 12-month low of $28.19 and a 12-month high of $45.47. The stock has a market cap of $8.25 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 48.79 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a quick ratio of 1.38, a current ratio of 1.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.10.

Open Text (NASDAQ:OTEX) (TSE:OTC) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 1st. The software maker reported $1.11 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.10 by $0.01. Open Text had a net margin of 2.85% and a return on equity of 24.61%. The firm had revenue of $1.53 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.48 billion. On average, analysts expect that Open Text will post 4.14 EPS for the current year.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

OTEX has been the subject of several recent research reports. StockNews.com lowered shares of Open Text from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday. Raymond James lowered their target price on shares of Open Text from $55.00 to $48.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Friday. Royal Bank of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $53.00 price target on shares of Open Text in a research report on Friday, February 2nd. Barclays reduced their price target on shares of Open Text from $44.00 to $38.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research report on Friday. Finally, Citigroup reduced their price target on shares of Open Text from $42.00 to $37.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Friday. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Open Text has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $42.25.

Open Text Company Profile

Open Text Corporation provides information management software and solutions. The company offers content services, which includes content collaboration and intelligent capture to records management, collaboration, e-signatures, and archiving; and operates experience cloud platform that provides customer experience and web content management, digital asset management, customer analytics, AI and insights, e-discovery, digital fax, omnichannel communications, secure messaging, and voice of customer, as well as customer journey, testing, and segmentation.