Should Income Investors Look At JH Educational Technology INC. (HKG:1935) Before Its Ex-Dividend?

It looks like JH Educational Technology INC. (HKG:1935) is about to go ex-dividend in the next 4 days. This means that investors who purchase shares on or after the 26th of May will not receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 9th of June.

JH Educational Technology's next dividend payment will be HK$0.075 per share, which looks like a nice increase on last year, when the company distributed a total of HK$0.037 to shareholders. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. So we need to investigate whether JH Educational Technology can afford its dividend, and if the dividend could grow.

Check out our latest analysis for JH Educational Technology

If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. That's why it's good to see JH Educational Technology paying out a modest 30% of its earnings. Yet cash flow is typically more important than profit for assessing dividend sustainability, so we should always check if the company generated enough cash to afford its dividend. What's good is that dividends were well covered by free cash flow, with the company paying out 14% of its cash flow last year.

It's positive to see that JH Educational Technology's dividend is covered by both profits and cash flow, since this is generally a sign that the dividend is sustainable, and a lower payout ratio usually suggests a greater margin of safety before the dividend gets cut.

Click here to see how much of its profit JH Educational Technology paid out over the last 12 months.

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

When earnings decline, dividend companies become much harder to analyse and own safely. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. From this perspective it's somewhat discouraging that earnings per share are down 4.6% but we'd note that investment in future growth can cause a similar impact.

We'd also point out that JH Educational Technology issued a meaningful number of new shares in the past year. It's hard to grow dividends per share when a company keeps creating new shares.

Given that JH Educational Technology has only been paying a dividend for a year, there's not much of a past history to draw insight from.

The Bottom Line

Is JH Educational Technology an attractive dividend stock, or better left on the shelf? Earnings per share are down meaningfully, although at least the company is paying out a low and conservative percentage of both its earnings and cash flow. It's definitely not great to see earnings falling, but at least there may be some buffer before the dividend needs to be cut. It might be worth researching if the company is reinvesting in growth projects that could grow earnings and dividends in the future, but for now we're not all that optimistic on its dividend prospects.

Want to learn more about JH Educational Technology's dividend performance? Check out this visualisation of its historical revenue and earnings growth.

A common investment mistake is buying the first interesting stock you see. Here you can find a list of promising dividend stocks with a greater than 2% yield and an upcoming dividend.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.