The board of Evercore Inc. (NYSE:EVR) has announced that it will be increasing its dividend on the 10th of September to US$0.68. This makes the dividend yield about the same as the industry average at 2.0%.

View our latest analysis for Evercore

Evercore's Payment Has Solid Earnings Coverage

Unless the payments are sustainable, the dividend yield doesn't mean too much. Before making this announcement, Evercore was easily earning enough to cover the dividend. This means that most of its earnings are being retained to grow the business.

EPS is set to fall by 15.4% over the next 12 months. If the dividend continues along recent trends, we estimate the payout ratio could be 26%, which we consider to be quite comfortable, with most of the company's earnings left over to grow the business in the future.

Evercore Has A Solid Track Record

The company has a sustained record of paying dividends with very little fluctuation. Since 2011, the first annual payment was US$0.60, compared to the most recent full-year payment of US$2.72. This implies that the company grew its distributions at a yearly rate of about 16% over that duration. We can see that payments have shown some very nice upward momentum without faltering, which provides some reassurance that future payments will also be reliable.

The Dividend Looks Likely To Grow

Investors who have held shares in the company for the past few years will be happy with the dividend income they have received. It's encouraging to see Evercore has been growing its earnings per share at 55% a year over the past five years. A low payout ratio gives the company a lot of flexibility, and growing earnings also make it very easy for it to grow the dividend.

We Really Like Evercore's Dividend

Overall, we think this could be an attractive income stock, and it is only getting better by paying a higher dividend this year. The distributions are easily covered by earnings, and there is plenty of cash being generated as well. If earnings do fall over the next 12 months, the dividend could be buffeted a little bit, but we don't think it should cause too much of a problem in the long term. All in all, this checks a lot of the boxes we look for when choosing an income stock.

Investors generally tend to favour companies with a consistent, stable dividend policy as opposed to those operating an irregular one. Still, investors need to consider a host of other factors, apart from dividend payments, when analysing a company. To that end, Evercore has 2 warning signs (and 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) we think you should know about. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of high performing dividend stock.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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