First Busey Co. (BUSE) To Go Ex-Dividend on January 24th

First Busey Co. (NASDAQ:BUSE) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, January 14th,Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Friday, January 24th will be given a dividend of 0.25 per share by the bank on Friday, January 31st. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.37%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, January 24th. This is a positive change from First Busey’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.24.

First Busey has raised its dividend payment by an average of 1.4% annually over the last three years. First Busey has a payout ratio of 33.6% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect First Busey to earn $2.47 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.96 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 38.9%.

First Busey Price Performance

BUSE traded down $0.19 on Thursday, reaching $22.86. The stock had a trading volume of 304,326 shares, compared to its average volume of 294,823. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $25.33 and a 200-day moving average of $25.60. The company has a market capitalization of $1.30 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.78 and a beta of 0.88. First Busey has a fifty-two week low of $21.59 and a fifty-two week high of $28.97. The company has a current ratio of 0.82, a quick ratio of 0.82 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22.

First Busey (NASDAQ:BUSE) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 22nd. The bank reported $0.58 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.54 by $0.04. First Busey had a return on equity of 8.94% and a net margin of 16.94%. The company had revenue of $170.45 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $118.32 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $0.55 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that First Busey will post 2.07 EPS for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

BUSE has been the topic of a number of recent analyst reports. Stephens cut shares of First Busey from an “overweight” rating to an “equal weight” rating and reduced their price target for the stock from $28.00 to $27.00 in a report on Monday, October 14th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods boosted their target price on First Busey from $32.00 to $34.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 4th.

About First Busey

First Busey Corporation operates as the bank holding company for Busey Bank that engages in the provision of retail and commercial banking products and services to individual, corporate, institutional, and governmental customers in the United States. It operates through three segments: Banking, Wealth Management, and FirsTech.