Meridian Co. (NASDAQ:MRBK) Declares $0.13 Quarterly Dividend

Meridian Co. (NASDAQ:MRBK) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, April 25th, Zacks reports. Shareholders of record on Monday, May 13th will be given a dividend of 0.125 per share on Monday, May 20th. This represents a $0.50 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 5.56%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, May 10th.

Meridian has raised its dividend payment by an average of 58.7% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend every year for the last 1 years. Meridian has a payout ratio of 30.1% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Meridian to earn $1.80 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.50 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 27.8%.

Meridian Stock Up 0.6 %

Meridian stock traded up $0.05 during trading on Wednesday, reaching $9.00. 3,544 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 13,362. The company’s 50-day moving average is $9.37 and its two-hundred day moving average is $11.09. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a quick ratio of 0.97 and a current ratio of 0.98. Meridian has a 52-week low of $8.26 and a 52-week high of $14.24. The firm has a market cap of $100.71 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.52 and a beta of 0.70.

Meridian (NASDAQ:MRBK) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Friday, April 26th. The company reported $0.24 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.23 by $0.01. The company had revenue of $45.20 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $23.68 million. Meridian had a net margin of 6.75% and a return on equity of 7.64%. On average, analysts predict that Meridian will post 1.35 earnings per share for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts have recently commented on the stock. Piper Sandler cut shares of Meridian from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and reduced their price target for the stock from $14.00 to $13.00 in a research report on Monday, January 29th. TheStreet lowered Meridian from a “b-” rating to a “c” rating in a report on Friday, January 26th.

About Meridian

Meridian Corporation operates as the holding company for Meridian Bank that provides commercial banking products and services in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, and Maryland. The company offers various deposit products, such as demand non-interest bearing, demand interest bearing, savings accounts, money market accounts, and time deposits.