Macroeconomic woes and geopolitical tensions have been weighing on investor sentiment, shaking major stock indexes over the past week.
Investors looking for stability may want to turn to dividend stocks.
They can follow the advice of Wall Street analysts who conduct a thorough analysis of the financial health of dividend-paying companies and assess their ability to grow their dividends over the long term.
Here are three attractive dividend stocksaccording to Wall Street’s Top Experts TipRanks is a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance.
Enterprise product partners
The first dividend stock of the week is Enterprise product partners (Environmental Protection Agency), a midstream energy services provider. The limited partnership has increased its cash distributions for 25 consecutive years, with a compound annual growth rate of 7%.
On April 5, Enterprise Products announced Cash distribution $0.515 per quarter, paid on May 14th. EPD stock offers an attractive dividend yield of 7.1%.
Following the company’s investor update call earlier this month, RBC Capital analysts Elvira Scotto Reiterate Buy rating on EPD stock with price target of $35. The analyst said the call supported her view that the company is well-positioned to benefit from its organic growth projects, which are expected to come online in 2026.
Scotto added that the company’s organic projects such as Mentonsi 2 Natural gas processing plants in Delaware) are concentrated in the Permian Basin, which is expected to continue growing for at least another decade.
Analysts are confident in EPA’s ability to support its growth investments due to its strong operating fundamentals and balance sheet. Additionally, she expects the company’s distribution to grow in the mid-single digits.
“EPA remains willing to return 55-60% of adjusted CFO (cash flow from operations) to investors through distributions and buybacks,” Scotto said.
Scotto ranks No. 84 among more than 8,700 analysts tracked by TipRanks. Her ratings were profitable 64% of the time, with an average return of 17.8% per rating. (look Environmental Protection Agency Technical Analysis on prompt ranking)
Goldman Sachs
let’s go to Goldman Sachs (GS), one of the leading investment banks in the United States. A rebound in capital markets activity helped it deliver solid results.
Goldman Sachs makes comeback US$2.43 billion in capital Returned to shareholders through $1.5 billion worth of stock repurchases and $929 million in dividends. The bank declared a dividend of $2.75 per share, payable on June 27.
Argus analysts react to impressive first-quarter results Stephen Biggar He raised Goldman Sachs’ rating to “buy” from “hold” with a target price of $465, and said the results “demonstrated the tremendous strength of Goldman Sachs’ business during the turnaround in investment banking.”
Despite some false rebounds in the investment banking space in 2023, analysts believe the current recovery appears capable of sustaining. His optimism was supported by encouraging sequential improvements in equity and debt underwriting. He was further encouraged by double-digit annual increases in the value of M&A deals announced across the industry in the first quarter.
Biggar expects these factors to drive improved revenue in the second half of 2024. The issuance volume surged by 239%, and the secondary issuance volume surged by 110%.
Biggar ranks No. 603 among more than 8,700 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His ratings were profitable 60% of the time, with an average return of 11.8% each time. (look Goldman Sachs stock buyback on prompt ranking)
Cisco Systems
Finally let’s take a look Cisco Systems (China Association for Science and Technology), a network equipment manufacturer. In the second quarter of fiscal 2024, the company returned a total of $2.8 billion to shareholders through stock repurchases and a dividend of 39 cents per share.
Cisco announced it will increase its dividend by about 3% to 40 cents per share, with payments starting in April 2024.
On April 15, Bank of America Securities Analyst Talking about Liani Upgraded Cisco Systems stock to buy from hold and raised price target to $60 from $55, citing valuation and three catalysts: AI-related tailwinds, security business Growth and the synergies associated with artificial intelligence. recently completed Splunk Acquisition.
“We expect the network to begin to normalize and achieve new growth driven by Cisco’s growing share of Ethernet-based AI deployments in hyperscale enterprises,” Liani said.
While the analyst agrees that pressure is likely to continue over the next two quarters, he believes this downward trend is fully reflected in Wall Street’s expectations. He thinks management’s guidance is conservative enough.
Meanwhile, Liani expects growth in the company’s security business to accelerate, driven by stability in the firewall space and its recently launched products.
Liani is ranked No. 532 among more than 8,700 analysts tracked by TipRanks. His rating success rate is 55%, with an average return per rating of 10.9%. (look Cisco Ownership Structure on prompt ranking)
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