Important news for shareholders and potential investors in Crescent Point Energy Corp (NYSE:CPG): The dividend payment of CA$0.03 per share will be distributed into shareholder on 15 December 2017, and the stock will begin trading ex-dividend at an earlier date, 29 November 2017. What does this mean for current shareholders and potential investors? Below, I will explain how holding CPG can impact your portfolio income stream, by analysing the stock’s most recent financial data and dividend attributes. See our latest analysis for CPG

How I analyze a dividend stock

Whenever I am looking at a potential dividend stock investment, I always check these five metrics:

• Is it the top 25% annual dividend yield payer?

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

• Has it increased its dividend per share amount over the past?

• Does earnings amply cover its dividend payments?

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

How well does Crescent Point Energy fit our criteria?

The current payout ratio for CPG is negative, which means that it is loss-making, and paying its dividend from its retained earnings. If dividend is a key criteria in your investment consideration, then you need to make sure the dividend stock you’re eyeing out is reliable in its payments. Dividend payments from Crescent Point Energy have been volatile in the past 10 years, with some years experiencing significant drops of over 25%. These characteristics do not bode well for income investors seeking reliable stream of dividends. Relative to peers, CPG has a yield of 3.83%, which is on the low-side for oil, gas and consumable fuels stocks.

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? Investors may not have the best feeling about their investment in CPG right now, in terms of its dividend attributes. It may be valuable exploring other income stocks as alternatives to CPG or even look at high-growth stocks to supplement your steady income stocks. I encourage you to continue your research by checking out my interactive free list of dividend rockstars as well as high-growth stocks to potentially add to your holdings.

Are you a potential investor? After digging a little deeper into CPG’s yield, it’s easy to see why you should be cautious investing in the company just for the dividend. On the other hand, if you are not strictly just a dividend investor, CPG could still be offering some interesting investment opportunities. As always, I urge potential investors to try and get a good understanding of the underlying business and its fundamentals before deciding on an investment. Check our latest free fundmental analysis to explore other aspects of CPG.

To help readers see pass 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.