It’s that time of year when we are scrambling to buy last-minute gifts before Christmas arrives. If you are looking to give yourself an investing present, here’s a stock worth considering: New Flyer Industries Inc. (TSX: NFI). What makes it a good gift? Solid numbers and stellar returns.
New Flyer by the numbers
We’ve talked before about how New Flyer offers good numbers for potential investors. The company also announced a positive deal earlier this month. How does the stock look now? The company announced its final quarterly dividend on December 15. The stock will pay out $0.325 per share, matching what it paid in the second and third quarter this year. Those were an increase from $0.2375 in the first quarter. The current dividend yield is 2.08%, and New Flyer has steadily increased its dividend over the last few years.
That dividend increase has helped the stock provide stellar one-, three- and five-year total return numbers (which look at price changes and income paid out to investors.) The stock’s one-year total return sits at 35.60%. That’s good, but the three- and five-year numbers look even better at 303.12% and 526.82%, respectively. If you held this stock over the last five years, you would have done well for yourself.
New Flyer beat earnings estimates each quarter this year. For the last quarter, which ended on September 30, the company reported earnings per share of $0.68, beating the average expectation of $0.66. In the previous three quarters, the results beat estimates by $0.07, $0.11, and $0.18 per share, so earnings have been great this year.
The stock has been a bit up and down this year, with a recent low that saw the stock drop to under $50 per share at the end of November, but it’s now back in the $54 to $55 range.
New Flyer has announced multiple deals and purchases this year, with the most recent coming on December 20. This order has Grand River Transit ordering 39 Xcelsior clean-diesel heavy duty transit buses and another nine rapid transit buses.
Bottom line
Past performance is never a guarantee of future performance, but this is a company that is producing good results, raising its dividend and increasing customer orders. If you are looking to add a stock to your Foolish portfolio before we ring in 2018, New Flyer deserves a second look.
