Over the past 10 years ABB Ltd (

VTX:ABBN

) has been paying dividends to shareholders. Theuspa bidet remote not working company currently pays out a dividend yield of 4.1% to shareholders, making it a relatively attractive dividend stock. Let’s dig deeper into whether ABB should have a place in your portfolio.

View our latest analysis for ABB

Here’s how I find good dividend stocks

When researching a dividend stock, I always follow the following screening criteria:

Is their annual yield among the top 25% of dividend payers?

Does it consistently pay out dividends without missing a payment of significantly cutting payout?

Has dividend per share amount increased over the past?

Is its earnings sufficient to payout dividend at the current rate?

Will it be able to continue to payout at the current rate in the future?

SWX:ABBN Historical Dividend Yield January 2nd 19

How does ABB fare?

The company currently pays out 76% of its earnings as a dividend, according to its trailing twelve-month data, meaning the dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. However, going forward, analysts expect ABBN’s payout to fall to 55% of its earnings. Assuming a constant share price, this equates to a dividend yield of around 4.6%. However, EPS should increase to $1.28, meaning that the lower payout ratio does not necessarily implicate a lower dividend payment.

When thinking about whether a dividend is sustainable,

another factor to consider is the cash flow

. Cash flow is important because companies with strong cash flow can usually sustain higher payout ratios.

If there’s one type of stock you want to be reliable, it’s dividend stocks and their stable income-generating ability. ABBN has increased its DPS from $0.42 to $0.77 in the past 10 years. During this period it has not missed a payment, as one would expect for a company increasing its dividend. These are all positive signs of a great, reliable dividend stock.

Relative to peers, ABB produces a yield of 4.1%, which is high for Electrical stocks.

Next Steps:

With these dividend metrics in mind, I definitely rank ABB as a strong income stock, and is worth further research for anyone who considers dividends an important part of their portfolio strategy. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, I urge potential investors to try and get a good understanding of the underlying business and its fundamentals before deciding on an investment. There are three relevant factors you should look at:

Future Outlook

: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for ABBN’s future growth? Take a look at our

free research report of analyst consensus

for ABBN’s outlook.

Valuation

: What is ABBN worth today? Even if the stock is a cash cow, it’s not worth an infinite price. The

intrinsic value infographic in our free research report

helps visualize whether ABBN is currently mispriced by the market.

Other Dividend Rockstars

: Are there better dividend payers with stronger fundamentals out there? Check out our

free list of these great stocks here

.

To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at

[email protected]

.

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