Littelfuse, Inc. Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.70 (NASDAQ:LFUS)

Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, October 24th,Zacks Dividends reports. Investors of record on Thursday, November 21st will be paid a dividend of 0.70 per share by the technology company on Thursday, December 5th. This represents a $2.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.18%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 21st.

Littelfuse has raised its dividend by an average of 9.2% per year over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 15 years. Littelfuse has a payout ratio of 27.1% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Littelfuse to earn $9.92 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.80 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 28.2%.

Littelfuse Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ LFUS opened at $237.82 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.31, a quick ratio of 2.52 and a current ratio of 3.55. Littelfuse has a one year low of $222.91 and a one year high of $275.58. The firm has a market capitalization of $5.90 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.57, a PEG ratio of 2.37 and a beta of 1.28. The company’s fifty day moving average is $255.12 and its two-hundred day moving average is $256.65.

Littelfuse (NASDAQ:LFUS) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 29th. The technology company reported $2.71 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.09 by $0.62. Littelfuse had a net margin of 8.88% and a return on equity of 8.49%. The firm had revenue of $567.39 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $557.38 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $2.97 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was down 6.5% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts forecast that Littelfuse will post 8.47 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts recently weighed in on LFUS shares. Robert W. Baird raised their price objective on Littelfuse from $300.00 to $315.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 29th. StockNews.com upgraded Littelfuse from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, October 18th. Stifel Nicolaus upgraded shares of Littelfuse from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $270.00 to $280.00 in a research report on Tuesday, August 13th. Benchmark reissued a “hold” rating on shares of Littelfuse in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Oppenheimer upgraded shares of Littelfuse from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $310.00 target price for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 17th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, four have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $285.00.

Insider Activity at Littelfuse

In other Littelfuse news, CEO David W. Heinzmann sold 8,715 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, August 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $274.40, for a total transaction of $2,391,396.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 59,654 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $16,369,057.60. This trade represents a 12.75 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, SVP Matthew Cole sold 1,436 shares of Littelfuse stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $246.02, for a total transaction of $353,284.72. Following the sale, the senior vice president now owns 5,522 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,358,522.44. This trade represents a 20.64 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 12,242 shares of company stock valued at $3,318,974 over the last quarter. Insiders own 2.30% of the company’s stock.

About Littelfuse

Littelfuse, Inc designs, manufactures, and sells electronic components, modules, and subassemblies in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The company operates through Electronic, Transportation, and Industrial segments. The Electronics segment offers fuses and fuse accessories, positive temperature coefficient resettable fuses, electromechanical switches and interconnect solutions, polymer electrostatic discharge suppressors, varistors, reed switch based magnetic sensing products, and gas discharge tubes; and discrete transient voltage suppressor (TVS) diodes, TVS diode arrays, protection and switching thyristors, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and diodes, and insulated gate bipolar transistors.