Quest Diagnostics Dividend Provides 2.10% Yield

Quest Diagnostics DGX revealed Wednesday that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.40 per share. This will work out to $1.60 a share on a full year basis. The dividend offered a yield of 2.10percent, which was higher than the five-year average dividend yield of 1.7 percent.

The current dividend worked out to 30.0 percent of its payout ratio, which was higher than the five-year average dividend payout ratio of 26.0 percent. As a result of boosting dividend rate in the last four years, its dividend growth pace for the five-year average was 32.74 percent while it was 18.21 percent for the three year average period.

Quest said the dividend would be payable on July 20, 2016 to all its shareholders. The company has fixed the record date of July 6 to determine the eligible shareholders.

The stock traded 0.4 percent up on Wednesday.