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3 Big Dividend Stocks Yielding at Least 9%; BTIG Says ‘Buy’
How important are dividends to a stock investor’s profits? Speaking before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on October 15, 2007, investing guru John Bogle laid out the case: “Over the past 81 years… reinvested dividend income accounted for approximately 95 percent of the compound long-term return earned by the companies in the S&P 500. These stunning figures would seem to demand that mutual funds highlight the importance of dividend income.” So in other words, dividends are pretty important! Of course, right now the average stock on the S&P 500 is only paying about a 2% dividend yield, which isn’t a lot. If you want to do better than that, though, the REIT sector is a great place to begin your search for high-yield dividend stocks. REITs are companies that acquire, own, operate, and manage real estate portfolios, usually some combination of residential or commercial real properties, or their associated mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities. Tax law requires that these companies return profits directly to shareholders, and most of them choose dividends as their vehicle of choice for compliance, resulting in frequent high dividend yields across the sector. The slowly ebbing COVID pandemic was hard on real estate managers, as tenants had trouble making rents and owners had trouble leasing vacant space. However, BTIG analyst Tim Hayes believes there are reasons to stay bullish on CRE properties specifically. “While we recognize the headwinds to commercial real estate (CRE) fundamentals and the potential risk to equity/earnings power, we believe there are several reasons to be constructive, especially with the sector trading at a discount to historical levels and offering attractive dividend yields at wide spreads to benchmark rates,” Hayes commented. Against this backdrop, we’ve opened up the TipRanks database to get the latest stats on Hayes’ CRE choices. These are stocks that the analyst initiated Buy ratings on, pointing out their high dividend yield. We are talking about at least 9% here. Ares Commercial Real Estate (ACRE) The first dividend pick we are looking at is Ares Commercial Real Estate, a company focused on the commercial real estate mortgage sector. Ares boasts a diversified portfolio – featuring office space, apartments, hotels, and mixed-use properties – mainly across the Southeast and West. The company has over $2 billion invested in 49 separate loans, 95% of which are senior mortgage loans. At the end of October, the company released 3Q20 earnings (the last reported quarter), showing $22.4 million in total revenue, for a 13% year-over-year gain. The 45-cents earnings per common share was up 40% since the prior year. Furthermore, Ares closed a $667 million commercial real estate collateralized loan obligation, with firmed up funding on 23 senior loans. On the dividend front, Ares declared in December its 4Q20 dividend. The payment, at 33 cents per common share, was paid out on January 15 – and is fully covered by current income levels. At current rates, the dividend annualizes to $1.32 and gives an impressive…
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