Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) Announces $0.05 Monthly Dividend

Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) announced a monthly dividend on Tuesday, November 5th,Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Wednesday, January 29th will be paid a dividend of 0.045 per share by the financial services provider on Wednesday, February 19th. This represents a $0.54 annualized dividend and a yield of 12.33%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, January 29th.

Prospect Capital has decreased its dividend payment by an average of 1.4% annually over the last three years. Prospect Capital has a payout ratio of 114.9% meaning the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments.

Prospect Capital Stock Performance

NASDAQ PSEC opened at $4.38 on Monday. The company has a quick ratio of 0.48, a current ratio of 0.48 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.65. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $4.42 and its 200-day moving average is $4.93. Prospect Capital has a one year low of $4.09 and a one year high of $6.24.

Prospect Capital (NASDAQ:PSEC) last released its earnings results on Friday, November 8th. The financial services provider reported $0.21 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.17 by $0.04. The firm had revenue of $196.31 million during the quarter. Prospect Capital had a positive return on equity of 12.19% and a negative net margin of 2.23%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CEO John F. Barry acquired 2,000,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, December 24th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $4.29 per share, with a total value of $8,580,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 79,477,549 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $340,958,685.21. This trade represents a 2.58 % increase in their position. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, COO M Grier Eliasek bought 210,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 29th. The stock was purchased at an average price of $4.81 per share, with a total value of $1,010,100.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer now directly owns 2,131,130 shares in the company, valued at approximately $10,250,735.30. This represents a 10.93 % increase in their position. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders have acquired a total of 5,273,173 shares of company stock worth $23,701,420 in the last quarter. Corporate insiders own 27.10% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Separately, StockNews.com upgraded Prospect Capital from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, December 6th.

About Prospect Capital

Prospect Capital Corporation is a business development company. It specializes in middle market, mature, mezzanine finance, later stage, emerging growth, leveraged buyouts, refinancing, acquisitions, recapitalizations, turnaround, growth capital, development, capital expenditures and subordinated debt tranches of collateralized loan obligations, cash flow term loans, market place lending and bridge transactions.