Buy Evertz Technologies for the dividend, Bruce Murray says

>Two minute read on Evertz Technologies stock

Looking at it track record, Evertz Technologies (Evertz Technologies stock Quote, Chart TSX:ET) definitely falls outside of the growth stock category, but that’s okay, says portfolio manager Bruce Murray, who owns the company for its healthy dividend.

Manufacturer of video and audio technology for the broadcast TV market, Burlington, Ontario’s Evertz has had what you’d call a consistent performance over the dozen years since its IPO in 2006. Aside from a late-2007 peak where it shot up to $42 per share, ET has stayed pretty much within the $15 to $20 price range, only modestly better than its IPO at $10.25 a share.

But consistency is not a problem when the dividend keeps coming, says Murray, CEO and chief investment officer at the Murray Wealth Group.

Why own Evertz Technologies stock?

“Evertz is a company that we own in our dividend fund,” says Murray to BNN Bloomberg. “It’s a very well-run company but the market for TV studios and stuff is rather limited. They’re quite profitable and they accumulate cash and every couple of years they pay an extra dividend.”

“They’ve got a nice little dividend yield of 3.5 or 4.0 per cent and then every two to three years you get another five to ten per cent dividend,” says Murray.

Last week, Evertz’s share price jumped on its fiscal first quarter 2019 financial report which included quarterly revenue of $103.1 million, net earnings of $17.4 million (a 32 per cent year-over-year increase) and fully diluted EPS of $0.23 per share (a 35 per cent year-over-year increase). Both revenue and EPS arrived in line with analysts’ expectations. The company declared on September 11 a regular quarterly dividend of $0.18 per share.