IDEX Co. (NYSE:IEX) Increases Dividend to $0.69 Per Share

IDEX Co. (NYSE:IEX) declared a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, May 7th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, May 17th will be given a dividend of 0.69 per share by the industrial products company on Friday, May 31st. This represents a $2.76 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.24%. This is a positive change from IDEX’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.64.

IDEX has increased its dividend by an average of 8.0% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 14 years. IDEX has a payout ratio of 28.1% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect IDEX to earn $9.20 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $2.56 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 27.8%.

IDEX Stock Down 0.2 %

IDEX stock traded down $0.34 during midday trading on Tuesday, hitting $221.81. 175,834 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 378,013. IDEX has a fifty-two week low of $183.76 and a fifty-two week high of $246.36. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.37, a current ratio of 3.37 and a quick ratio of 2.45. The company has a market cap of $16.79 billion, a PE ratio of 29.23, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.21 and a beta of 0.99. The company’s fifty day moving average price is $234.94 and its 200-day moving average price is $217.68.

IDEX (NYSE:IEX) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 23rd. The industrial products company reported $1.88 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.76 by $0.12. IDEX had a net margin of 17.89% and a return on equity of 17.60%. The firm had revenue of $801.00 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $807.52 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $2.09 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was down 5.3% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts predict that IDEX will post 8.33 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on IEX shares. StockNews.com lowered IDEX from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, May 2nd. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating and set a $255.00 target price on shares of IDEX in a report on Thursday, March 21st. Oppenheimer boosted their price objective on shares of IDEX from $245.00 to $252.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 18th. Stifel Nicolaus raised IDEX from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their price objective for the stock from $215.00 to $265.00 in a research report on Thursday, February 8th. Finally, Robert W. Baird cut their price objective on shares of IDEX from $260.00 to $256.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, April 25th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $250.71.

IDEX Company Profile

IDEX Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides applied solutions worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Fluid & Metering Technologies (FMT), Health & Science Technologies (HST), and Fire & Safety/Diversified Products (FSDP). The FMT segment designs, produces, and distributes positive displacement pumps, valves, small volume provers, flow meters, injectors, and other fluid-handling pump modules and systems, as well as flow monitoring and other services for the food, chemical, general industrial, water and wastewater, agricultural, and energy industries.