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Jefferies Financial Rewards Investors With 20% Dividend Hike

Zacks Equity Research

Jefferies Financial Group Inc. JEF has raised its quarterly cash dividend by 20% to 15 cents per share. The dividend will be paid out on Feb 28, 2020 to shareholders of record as of Feb 14.

Considering last day’s closing price of $21.90, the company’s dividend yield currently stands at 2.74%. Not only is the yield attractive for income investors, but also represents a steady income stream.

Jefferies Financial has been announcing dividend hikes since the past few years. The last dividend hike was announced in July 2018, when the company hiked its dividend by 25% to 12.5 cents per share.

Jefferies Financial remains committed toward enhancing shareholder value as seen from its involvement in meaningful capital deployment activities.

The company has an efficient share repurchase program in place. During the 12 months ended Nov 30, 2019, it repurchased 25.9 million shares for $506 million.

Notably, the company is well positioned for growth, owing to an improving economy, significant rise in its market share in several businesses, high corporate cash balance and restructuring activities across Europe. However, increasing expenses, mainly due to rise in compensation and benefit costs, will likely hurt its bottom-line growth to some extent.

Looking at its price performance, shares of the company have gained 4.5% over the past six months against 6.6% decline of the industry it belongs to.




Currently, Jefferies Financial carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

A few other finance stocks, which have raised their dividends during the past four months, are M&T Bank Corporation MTB, Franklin Resources BEN and United Bankshares, Inc UBSI. M&T Bank raised its quarterly dividend by 10% while Franklin raised the same by 4%. United Bankshares announced a 3% rise in its common stock dividend.

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M&T Bank Corporation (MTB) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
United Bankshares, Inc. (UBSI) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
Jefferies Financial Group Inc. (JEF) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
Franklin Resources, Inc. (BEN) : Free Stock Analysis Report
 
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Zacks Investment Research