Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) Declares $0.05 Monthly Dividend

Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) declared a monthly dividend on Tuesday, February 11th,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Monday, April 28th will be given a dividend of 0.045 per share by the financial services provider on Tuesday, May 20th. This represents a $0.54 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 12.59%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, April 28th.

Prospect Capital has decreased its dividend by an average of 2.1% per year over the last three years. Prospect Capital has a payout ratio of 114.9% meaning the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments.

Prospect Capital Price Performance

PSEC stock traded up $0.12 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, hitting $4.29. The company had a trading volume of 5,425,809 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,562,276. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $4.33 and a 200 day moving average price of $4.83. Prospect Capital has a 12-month low of $4.09 and a 12-month high of $5.86. The company has a market capitalization of $1.87 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -16.50 and a beta of 0.99. The company has a quick ratio of 0.48, a current ratio of 0.48 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.65.

Prospect Capital (NASDAQ:PSEC) last released its quarterly earnings results on Friday, November 8th. The financial services provider reported $0.21 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.04. Prospect Capital had a negative net margin of 2.23% and a positive return on equity of 12.19%. The company had revenue of $196.31 million for the quarter.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, COO M Grier Eliasek acquired 210,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 29th. The shares were bought at an average price of $4.81 per share, with a total value of $1,010,100.00. Following the completion of the purchase, the chief operating officer now directly owns 2,131,130 shares in the company, valued at $10,250,735.30. This trade represents a 10.93 % increase in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CEO John F. Barry bought 837,273 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 18th. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $4.47 per share, with a total value of $3,742,610.31. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 73,450,112 shares in the company, valued at $328,322,000.64. This represents a 1.15 % increase in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. In the last three months, insiders acquired 5,273,173 shares of company stock valued at $23,701,420. Insiders own 27.10% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Separately, StockNews.com raised shares of Prospect Capital from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Friday, December 6th.

Prospect Capital Company Profile

Prospect Capital Corporation is a business development company. It specializes in middle market, mature, mezzanine finance, later stage, emerging growth, leveraged buyouts, refinancing, acquisitions, recapitalizations, turnaround, growth capital, development, capital expenditures and subordinated debt tranches of collateralized loan obligations, cash flow term loans, market place lending and bridge transactions.