Fortis (NYSE:FTS) Announces Quarterly Earnings Results

Fortis (NYSE:FTS) released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday. The utilities provider reported $0.85 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.59 by $0.26, Briefing.com reports. Fortis had a net margin of 13.90% and a return on equity of 7.04%. The business had revenue of $2.03 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.01 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $0.63 earnings per share.

Fortis Price Performance

NYSE:FTS traded up $0.27 during trading hours on Thursday, hitting $43.86. 530,835 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 700,873. The firm has a market cap of $21.81 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.58, a P/E/G ratio of 3.87 and a beta of 0.47. The company has a quick ratio of 0.58, a current ratio of 0.69 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.26. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $44.45 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $41.92. Fortis has a 52 week low of $36.86 and a 52 week high of $46.06.

Fortis Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Sunday, December 1st. Stockholders of record on Monday, November 18th will be issued a $0.615 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 18th. This represents a $2.46 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 5.61%. This is a boost from Fortis’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.43. Fortis’s dividend payout ratio is presently 72.46%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

FTS has been the subject of several analyst reports. StockNews.com raised shares of Fortis from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Sunday, August 4th. UBS Group raised Fortis to a “strong sell” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 10th. Bank of America assumed coverage on Fortis in a report on Friday, September 20th. They set an “underperform” rating on the stock. Finally, Raymond James lowered Fortis from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Wednesday. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and two have issued a hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Fortis currently has an average rating of “Reduce”.

About Fortis

Fortis Inc operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 447,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 103,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,408 megawatts (MW), including 68 MW of solar capacity and 250 MV of wind capacity.