Empire Company Limited (TSE:EMP.A) Receives Consensus Rating of “Hold” from Brokerages

Shares of Empire Company Limited (TSE:EMP.A) have been assigned an average rating of “Hold” from the six brokerages that are presently covering the stock, Marketbeat reports. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 1 year price objective among brokers that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is C$52.83.

Several equities research analysts have recently commented on the company. Royal Bank Of Canada reduced their price objective on Empire from C$61.00 to C$55.00 and set a “sector perform” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, January 23rd. Scotiabank lowered Empire from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating and set a C$52.00 price objective for the company. in a research note on Thursday, April 9th.

Empire Trading Up 0.2%

TSE:EMP.A opened at C$47.56 on Thursday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 135.51, a current ratio of 0.79 and a quick ratio of 0.29. The firm has a market capitalization of C$10.78 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 70.99, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 16.20 and a beta of -0.04. Empire has a one year low of C$43.81 and a one year high of C$58.32. The business has a fifty day moving average price of C$49.07 and a 200-day moving average price of C$48.65.

Empire (TSE:EMP.A) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, March 12th. The company reported C$0.72 EPS for the quarter. The firm had revenue of C$7.89 billion during the quarter. Empire had a return on equity of 12.94% and a net margin of 2.18%. Sell-side analysts forecast that Empire will post 2.9581227 EPS for the current year.

Empire Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, April 30th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, April 30th will be paid a $0.22 dividend. This represents a $0.88 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.9%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, April 15th. Empire’s dividend payout ratio is presently 128.36%.

About Empire

Empire Co Ltd key businesses are food retailing, investments, and other operations. The food retailing division operates through Empire’s subsidiary Sobeys and represents nearly all of the company’s income. This segment owns, affiliates, or franchises more than 1,500 stores in 10 provinces, under retail banners including Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods, Lawton’s Drug Stores, and multiple retail fuel locations. The company’s investment and other operations segment include the investment in Crombie REIT, which is an open-ended Canadian real estate investment trust, as well as the Genstar Development Partnership.