Dividend payout ratio


Dividend payout ratio

Percentage of earnings paid out as dividends.

Dividend Payout Ratio

In fundamental analysis, the opposite of the plowback ratio. That is, the dividend payout ratio is a company's dividends paid to shareholders expressed as a percentage of total earnings. A higher ratio indicates that a company pays more in dividends and thus reinvests less of its earnings into the company. Whether or not this is desirable depends on the rate of growth; investors tend to prefer a higher payout ratio in a slow-growing company and a lower one in a fast-growing company.

dividend payout ratio

See payout ratio.

Dividend payout ratio.

You can calculate a dividend payout ratio by dividing the dividend a company pays per share by the company's earnings per share. The normal range is 25% to 50% of earnings, though the average is higher in some sectors of the economy than in others.

Some analysts think that an unusually high ratio may indicate that a company is in financial trouble but doesn't want to alarm shareholders by reducing its dividend.