Should Income Investors Buy Global Medical REIT Inc (NYSE:GMRE) Before Its Ex-Dividend?

If you are interested in cashing in on Global Medical REIT Inc’s (NYSE:GMRE) upcoming dividend of US$0.20 per share, you only have 2 days left to buy the shares before its ex-dividend date, 25 June 2018, in time for dividends payable on the 11 July 2018. Is this future income a persuasive enough catalyst for investors to think about Global Medical REIT as an investment today? Below, I’m going to look at the latest data and analyze the stock and its dividend property in further detail. See our latest analysis for Global Medical REIT

5 questions to ask before buying a dividend stock

When researching a dividend stock, I always follow the following screening criteria:

• Is its annual yield among the top 25% of dividend-paying companies?

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

• Has dividend per share risen in the past couple of years?

• Can it afford to pay the current rate of dividends from its earnings?

• Based on future earnings growth, will it be able to continue to payout dividend at the current rate?

How well does Global Medical REIT fit our criteria?

The current payout ratio for GMRE is negative, which means that it is loss-making, and paying its dividend from its retained earnings.

If there is one thing that you want to be reliable in your life, it’s dividend stocks and their constant income stream. The reality is that it is too early to consider Global Medical REIT as a dividend investment. It has only been consistently paying dividends for 4 years, however, standard practice for reliable payers is to look for a 10-year minimum track record.

Compared to its peers, Global Medical REIT has a yield of 8.81%, which is high for REITs stocks.

Next Steps:

Now you know to keep in mind the reason why investors should be careful investing in Global Medical REIT for the dividend. But if you are not exclusively a dividend investor, the stock could still be an interesting investment opportunity. Given that this is purely a dividend analysis, I recommend taking sufficient time to understand its core business and determine whether the company and its investment properties suit your overall goals. I’ve put together three important factors you should further examine:

1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for GMRE’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for GMRE’s outlook.

2. Valuation: What is GMRE worth today? Even if the stock is a cash cow, it’s not worth an infinite price. The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether GMRE is currently mispriced by the market.

3. Dividend Rockstars: Are there better dividend payers with stronger fundamentals out there? Check out our free list of these great stocks here.

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.