Important news for shareholders and potential investors in Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW): The dividend payment of $0.16 per share will be distributed into shareholder on 15 December 2017, and the stock will begin trading ex-dividend at an earlier date, 15 November 2017. Investors looking for higher income-generating stocks to add to their portfolio should keep reading, as I take a deeper dive into GLW’s latest financial data to analyse its dividend attributes. See our latest analysis for GLW

5 checks you should use to assess a dividend stock

If you are a dividend investor, you should always assess these five key metrics:

• Is their annual yield among the top 25% of dividend payers?

• Has it paid dividend every year without dramatically reducing payout in the past?

• Has the amount of dividend per share grown over the past?

• Does earnings amply cover its dividend payments?

• Will the company be able to keep paying dividend based on the future earnings growth?

How does Corning fare?

The company currently pays out 22.96% of its earnings as a dividend, meaning the dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. In the near future, analysts are predicting a payout ratio of 38.07% and dividends yield to be around 2.16%. Moreover, EPS should decrease to $1.59. This means the company should be able to continue to payout dividends. If dividend is a key criteria in your investment consideration, then you need to make sure the dividend stock you’re eyeing out is reliable in its payments. GLW has increased its DPS from $0.2 to $0.62 in the past 10 years. During this period it has not missed a payment, as one would expect for a company increasing its dividend. These are all positive signs of a great, reliable dividend stock. Compared to its peers, GLW has a yield of 1.95%, which is high for electronic equipment, instruments and components stocks but still below the low risk savings rate.

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? If GLW is in your portfolio for cash-generating reasons, there may be better alternatives out there, preferably ones with a more robust and increasing payout over time. It may be worth exploring other dividend stocks as alternatives to GLW or even look at high-growth stocks to complement your steady income stocks. I suggest continuing your research by exploring my interactive free list of dividend rockstars as well as high-growth stocks to potentially add to your holdings.

Are you a potential investor? There isn’t much to like about Corning from a dividend stock perspective. On the other hand, if you are not strictly just a dividend investor, GLW could still be offering some interesting investment opportunities. I also recommend taking sufficient time to understand its core business and determine whether the company and its investment properties suit your overall goals. Check our latest free fundmental analysis to explore other aspects of GLW.

To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.