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

Prospect Capital Co. (NASDAQ:PSEC) declared a monthly dividend on Friday, May 9th, Wall Street Journal reports. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, August 27th will be paid a dividend of 0.045 per share by the financial services provider on Thursday, September 18th. This represents a $0.54 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 15.25%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, August 27th.

Prospect Capital has decreased its dividend by an average of 2.1% annually over the last three years. Prospect Capital has a payout ratio of 101.9% indicating that the company cannot currently cover its dividend with earnings alone and is relying on its balance sheet to cover its dividend payments.

Prospect Capital Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ PSEC opened at $3.54 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.60, a current ratio of 0.76 and a quick ratio of 0.76. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $3.87 and its 200-day simple moving average is $4.27. Prospect Capital has a 12 month low of $3.39 and a 12 month high of $5.72. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.58 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -17.70 and a beta of 0.93.

Prospect Capital (NASDAQ:PSEC) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, May 8th. The financial services provider reported $0.19 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.14 by $0.05. The company had revenue of $170.72 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $174.29 million. Prospect Capital had a net margin of 1.18% and a return on equity of 12.31%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Prospect Capital news, Director William Gremp bought 19,100 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, March 18th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $4.29 per share, with a total value of $81,939.00. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director now directly owns 75,153 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $322,406.37. This represents a 34.07 % increase in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CEO John F. Barry purchased 24,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, March 24th. The stock was acquired at an average cost of $4.24 per share, for a total transaction of $101,760.00. Following the completion of the purchase, the chief executive officer now owns 82,594,540 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $350,200,849.60. This represents a 0.03 % increase in their position. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders purchased a total of 2,548,000 shares of company stock worth $10,970,715 in the last 90 days. Insiders own 28.25% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities analysts recently weighed in on the company. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their price target on Prospect Capital from $4.00 to $3.50 and set an “underweight” rating for the company in a report on Monday, April 28th. StockNews.com raised Prospect Capital from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Saturday, April 12th.

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.