EQT Co. Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.16 (NYSE:EQT)

EQT Co. (NYSE:EQT) declared a quarterly dividend on Wednesday, April 17th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, May 8th will be paid a dividend of 0.1575 per share by the oil and gas producer on Saturday, June 1st. This represents a $0.63 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.56%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, May 7th.

EQT has increased its dividend payment by an average of 172.6% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 2 consecutive years. EQT has a payout ratio of 16.8% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect EQT to earn $4.01 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.63 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 15.7%.

EQT Price Performance

Shares of NYSE:EQT opened at $40.27 on Monday. The company has a market capitalization of $17.78 billion, a PE ratio of 29.18 and a beta of 1.09. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $36.82 and a 200-day moving average price of $37.77. EQT has a 1-year low of $30.84 and a 1-year high of $45.23. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a current ratio of 0.88 and a quick ratio of 0.88.

EQT (NYSE:EQT) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, April 23rd. The oil and gas producer reported $0.82 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.65 by $0.17. The company had revenue of $1.30 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.58 billion. EQT had a net margin of 10.96% and a return on equity of 4.57%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was down 28.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $1.70 earnings per share. As a group, equities analysts expect that EQT will post 1.14 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages recently issued reports on EQT. Wells Fargo & Company cut shares of EQT from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating and dropped their target price for the stock from $48.00 to $37.00 in a report on Wednesday, April 17th. Scotiabank upgraded EQT from a “sector perform” rating to a “sector outperform” rating and upped their price objective for the company from $40.00 to $52.00 in a research report on Thursday, April 11th. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and issued a $46.00 target price (up from $41.00) on shares of EQT in a research report on Tuesday, April 30th. Jefferies Financial Group boosted their price target on EQT from $42.00 to $43.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, April 5th. Finally, Sanford C. Bernstein upgraded shares of EQT from an “underperform” rating to a “market perform” rating and increased their price objective for the stock from $27.00 to $34.00 in a research note on Wednesday, April 10th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have given a hold rating and nine have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, EQT has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $44.56.

About EQT

EQT Corporation operates as a natural gas production company in the United States. The company sells natural gas and natural gas liquids to marketers, utilities, and industrial customers through pipelines located in the Appalachian Basin. It also offers marketing services and contractual pipeline capacity management services.