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Are You Looking for a High-Growth Dividend Stock?

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All investors love getting big returns from their portfolio, whether it's through stocks, bonds, ETFs, or other types of securities. But when you're an income investor, your primary focus is generating consistent cash flow from each of your liquid investments.

Cash flow can come from bond interest, interest from other types of investments, and of course, dividends. A dividend is that coveted distribution of a company's earnings paid out to shareholders, and investors often view it by its dividend yield, a metric that measures the dividend as a percent of the current stock price. Many academic studies show that dividends account for significant portions of long-term returns, with dividend contributions exceeding one-third of total returns in many cases.

Columbia Banking in Focus

Columbia Banking (COLB - Free Report) is headquartered in Tacoma, and is in the Finance sector. The stock has seen a price change of -5.25% since the start of the year. The bank holding company is paying out a dividend of $0.36 per share at the moment, with a dividend yield of 5.7% compared to the Banks - West industry's yield of 2.78% and the S&P 500's yield of 1.5%.

Taking a look at the company's dividend growth, its current annualized dividend of $1.44 is up 4.3% from last year. In the past five-year period, Columbia Banking has increased its dividend 2 times on a year-over-year basis for an average annual increase of 6.36%. Future dividend growth will depend on earnings growth as well as payout ratio, which is the proportion of a company's annual earnings per share that it pays out as a dividend. Right now, Columbia Banking's payout ratio is 56%, which means it paid out 56% of its trailing 12-month EPS as dividend.

Earnings growth looks solid for COLB for this fiscal year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2024 is $2.55 per share, which represents a year-over-year growth rate of 0.39%.

Bottom Line

From greatly improving stock investing profits and reducing overall portfolio risk to providing tax advantages, investors like dividends for a variety of different reasons. However, not all companies offer a quarterly payout.

Big, established firms that have more secure profits are often seen as the best dividend options, but it's fairly uncommon to see high-growth businesses or tech start-ups offer their stockholders a dividend. Income investors must be conscious of the fact that high-yielding stocks tend to struggle during periods of rising interest rates. With that in mind, COLB presents a compelling investment opportunity; it's not only an attractive dividend play, but the stock also boasts a strong Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).


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