12 Stocks And Funds With Recent Dividend Growth

 | Jun 30, 2013 04:20AM ET

The summer season is now here and the list of dividend growers shrinks to new lows. Last week, only 9 companies and three funds announced a dividend hike. Only four of them have a current buy or better rating. The average dividend growth of the top dividend growers from last week amounts to 13.29 percent.

Darden Restaurants (DRI) has a market capitalization of $6.89 billion. The company employs 181,468 people, generates revenue of $8.552 billion and has a net income of $412.60 million. The firm’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) amounts to $1.043 billion. The EBITDA margin is 12.20 percent (the operating margin is 6.11 percent and the net profit margin 4.82 percent).

Financial Analysis: The total debt represents 39.11 percent of the company’s assets and the total debt in relation to the equity amounts to 131.74 percent. Due to the financial situation, a return on equity of 21.15 percent was realized. Twelve trailing months earnings per share reached a value of $3.13. Last fiscal year, the company paid $2.0 in the form of dividends to shareholders. DRI announced a 10.0 percent dividend hike last week.

Market Valuation: Here are the price ratios of the company: The P/E ratio is 16.10, the P/S ratio is 0.77 and the P/B ratio is finally 3.34. The dividend yield amounts to 4.36 percent and the beta ratio has a value of 0.87.