If you are interested in the tech sector but also appreciate dividend income with your stocks, you may find this list very interesting.
We ran a screen on tech sector stocks paying dividend yields above 2% and sustainable payout ratios below 35% for those that are seeing high growth in their dividend, comparing the current year dividend estimate to the trailing-twelve-month dividend per share. We then screened for stocks that have also seen significant net institutional buying over the current quarter.
Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in analyst ratings over the last two years for the stocks mentioned below. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.
We also created a price-weighted index of the stocks mentioned below, and monitored the performance of the list relative to the S&P 500 index over the last month. To access a complete analysis of this list's recent performance, click here.
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Do you think the smart money is calling it right on these names? Use this list as a starting-off point for your own analysis.
List sorted by net institutional purchases as a percent of share float.
1. MKS Instruments Inc. (MKSI): Diversified Machinery Industry. Market cap of $1.36B. Dividend yield at 2.31%, payout ratio at 10.63%. Current year dividend per share estimate at $0.60 vs. TTM dividend per share at $0.35. Net institutional purchases at 2.7M, which is 5.31% of the company's share float. The stock has gained 20.1% over the last year.
2. Littelfuse Inc. (LFUS): Industrial Electrical Equipment Industry. Market cap of $1.26B. Dividend yield at 1.08%, payout ratio at 7.78%. Current year dividend per share estimate at $0.60 vs. TTM dividend per share at $0.35. Net institutional purchases at 455.3K, which is 2.03% of the company's share float. The stock has gained 50.78% over the last year.
3. Micrel Inc. (MCRL): Semiconductor Industry. Market cap of $627.30M. Dividend yield at 1.39%, payout ratio at 17.47%. Current year dividend per share estimate at $0.19 vs. TTM dividend per share at $0.16. Net institutional purchases at 568.1K, which is 1.13% of the company's share float. The stock is a short squeeze candidate, with a short float at 5.68% (equivalent to 6.44 days of average volume). The stock has lost 1.56% over the last year.
4. STMicroelectronics NV (STM): Semiconductor Industry. Market cap of $7.47B. Dividend yield at 4.87%, payout ratio at 23.36%. Current year dividend per share estimate at $0.39 vs. TTM dividend per share at $0.29. Net institutional purchases at 4.9M, which is 0.78% of the company's share float. It's been a rough couple of days for the stock, losing 9.08% over the last week.
*Dividend data sourced from Screener.co, institutional data sourced from Fidelity, all other data sourced from Finviz.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
