SunTrust: A Bank Raising Its Dividend! (STI)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 26, 3:37PM EDT · Published Feb 12, 2:03PM EST

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Most banks have been having to be quiet as a church mouse not let their CDO and mortgage operation murder their books all at once. many banks and financials have had to lower their dividends. Some are failing and some are destined to fail

Companies that RAISE their dividends are deemed as "confident in their future and their ability to post consistent earnings." Enter the news from SunTrust Banks. Inc. (NYSE: STI). Today it hiked its dividend by 5% and its previous $2.92 annualized dividend is now going to be a higher level at $3.08 EPS. This will now carry a 4.7% dividend yield, not a crummy one at all. That is better than most of our Dogs of the Dow dividends.

SunTrust noted that this "reflects the strength of SunTrust’s underlying financial resources" and "confidence in the Company’s ability to successfully manage through the current environment."

What a stark difference this is to others. We recently gave a full list of companies we thought may CUT the dividend. We have noted this as one of the potential candidates in financial mergers, and this might as well be a reason we tied this one to Warren Buffett before.

SunTrust shares are at $64.80 +/- on last look. Its 52-week trading range is $54.30 to $94.18. Analysts have an average target of $64.00 or higher. This might even trigger some upgrades from a negative analyst community that is desperate to find an oasis in a miserably hot desert.

Jon C. Ogg
February 12, 2008

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.