W. P. Carey Inc. (NYSE:WPC) Raises Dividend to $0.88 Per Share

W. P. Carey Inc. (NYSE:WPC) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, December 12th,RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, December 31st will be paid a dividend of 0.88 per share by the real estate investment trust on Wednesday, January 15th. This represents a $3.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 6.30%. This is a positive change from W. P. Carey’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.88.

W. P. Carey has decreased its dividend by an average of 0.9% annually over the last three years. W. P. Carey has a payout ratio of 134.6% indicating that the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments. Equities research analysts expect W. P. Carey to earn $4.66 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $3.50 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 75.1%.

W. P. Carey Price Performance

Shares of WPC opened at $55.89 on Friday. W. P. Carey has a 12 month low of $53.09 and a 12 month high of $67.40. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.90, a current ratio of 1.00 and a quick ratio of 1.00. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $57.21 and a 200 day moving average price of $57.99. The company has a market cap of $12.23 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.00, a PEG ratio of 1.04 and a beta of 0.96.

W. P. Carey (NYSE:WPC) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 29th. The real estate investment trust reported $0.51 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.13 by ($0.62). The firm had revenue of $394.78 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $377.43 million. W. P. Carey had a return on equity of 6.45% and a net margin of 35.12%. The firm’s revenue was down 11.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business earned $1.32 EPS. On average, research analysts forecast that W. P. Carey will post 4.5 earnings per share for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on WPC. Evercore ISI boosted their price objective on W. P. Carey from $63.00 to $66.00 and gave the stock an “in-line” rating in a research report on Monday, September 16th. UBS Group reduced their price target on W. P. Carey from $62.00 to $60.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, November 14th. Wells Fargo & Company reissued an “equal weight” rating and set a $63.00 price target (up from $62.00) on shares of W. P. Carey in a report on Tuesday, October 1st. Finally, Barclays increased their target price on shares of W. P. Carey from $54.00 to $56.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Thursday, October 10th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, W. P. Carey presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $62.88.

About W. P. Carey

W. P. Carey ranks among the largest net lease REITs with a well-diversified portfolio of high-quality, operationally critical commercial real estate, which includes 1,424 net lease properties covering approximately 173 million square feet and a portfolio of 89 self-storage operating properties as of December 31, 2023.