I had some extra liquid cash from dividends paid in the self-directed IRA account and came across some info on Alesco Financial Inc. (AFN). It's an REIT that has been hammered pretty hard from around 10 a year ago to close to 3 today. Upon the announcement of its quarterly dividend, the stock has started to rebound and I jumped on board. Essentially, given the decline in the share price, the market had priced in a massive cut in the dividend, but that has not been the case.
The dividend had been steady at $0.31 per share for some time and the assumption given the share price decline was that the dividend would be cut substantially or altogether. Fortunately, the dividend has been announced as $0.25 payable April 10 to shareholders of record March 20.
The stock is close to $3, so this represents around a 30% yield. Obviously, this isn't sustainable, so either the share price will rise substantially or the dividend will be cut further to bring the long term yield to something around 10-15%, which is commensurate with the highest yielding sustained price stocks.
I've posted in the past that one has to be skeptical of such high yields, so you need to do your own research on this one. The big driver for me was this recent announcement of the dividend, solidifying management's view of the near term ability to continue to deliver cash back to shareholders.
I took a look at their financials. In the recent quarters, the revenue's been increasing steadily, but cash is declining. Accounts payable has blipped up a bit, but long term debt has declined. There are some offsets you may want to investigate further. In my case, I just threw a few hundred bucks at it, knowing I'm assured at least a dividend payment in the next couple weeks, which of course will buck the stock following ex-dividend, but if this housing/CDO situation turns around and the stock holds on, I could be holding a massive capital gainer with a 30% return on initial investment from dividends along the way.
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