Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) Declares Quarterly Dividend of $0.31

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE:AGO) announced a quarterly dividend on Friday, November 8th,NASDAQ Dividends reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 22nd will be paid a dividend of 0.31 per share by the financial services provider on Friday, December 6th. This represents a $1.24 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.36%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, November 22nd.

Assured Guaranty has increased its dividend by an average of 11.9% per year over the last three years. Assured Guaranty has a dividend payout ratio of 19.8% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Assured Guaranty to earn $6.50 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $1.24 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 19.1%.

Assured Guaranty Trading Down 0.3 %

NYSE AGO opened at $91.25 on Thursday. The company has a 50-day moving average of $83.74 and a 200-day moving average of $79.98. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29, a current ratio of 0.91 and a quick ratio of 0.91. Assured Guaranty has a 12 month low of $66.14 and a 12 month high of $96.60. The company has a market cap of $4.64 billion, a P/E ratio of 7.07 and a beta of 1.10.

Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Monday, November 11th. The financial services provider reported $2.42 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.42 by $1.00. The company had revenue of $269.00 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $202.57 million. Assured Guaranty had a net margin of 70.37% and a return on equity of 11.58%. Assured Guaranty’s revenue for the quarter was down 33.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $3.42 EPS. As a group, equities analysts predict that Assured Guaranty will post 7.3 earnings per share for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts have commented on AGO shares. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods upped their price target on Assured Guaranty from $92.00 to $105.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Monday. UBS Group increased their target price on shares of Assured Guaranty from $87.00 to $95.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Monday. Finally, StockNews.com raised shares of Assured Guaranty from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 13th.

Insider Activity

In other Assured Guaranty news, CEO Dominic Frederico sold 31,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $80.01, for a total value of $2,480,310.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 1,380,119 shares in the company, valued at $110,423,321.19. The trade was a 2.20 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, Director Yukiko Omura sold 3,599 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 26th. The shares were sold at an average price of $79.73, for a total value of $286,948.27. Following the sale, the director now owns 19,285 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,537,593.05. This represents a 15.73 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 5.10% of the company’s stock.

About Assured Guaranty

Assured Guaranty Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides credit protection products to public finance, infrastructure, and structured finance markets in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Insurance and Asset Management. The company offers financial guaranty insurance that protects holders of debt instruments and other monetary obligations from defaults in scheduled payments.