Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) Declares $0.02 Quarterly Dividend

Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD - Get Free Report) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, December 17th,RTT News reports. Investors of record on Friday, December 27th will be paid a dividend of 0.02 per share by the transportation company on Wednesday, January 8th. This represents a $0.08 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.68%.

Heartland Express has a dividend payout ratio of 72.7% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research analysts expect Heartland Express to earn $0.22 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.08 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 36.4%.

Heartland Express Trading Down 0.3 %

NASDAQ HTLD traded down $0.04 during trading hours on Tuesday, reaching $11.72. The company had a trading volume of 358,998 shares, compared to its average volume of 354,513. The company has a current ratio of 1.17, a quick ratio of 1.17 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24. The stock has a market capitalization of $919.98 million, a P/E ratio of -40.41 and a beta of 0.75. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $11.88 and a 200 day moving average of $12.03. Heartland Express has a 1-year low of $9.63 and a 1-year high of $14.60.

Heartland Express (NASDAQ:HTLD - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 29th. The transportation company reported ($0.12) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.01) by ($0.11). Heartland Express had a negative return on equity of 2.70% and a negative net margin of 2.11%. The company had revenue of $259.86 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $268.35 million. The business's revenue was down 11.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted ($0.14) earnings per share. As a group, research analysts anticipate that Heartland Express will post -0.38 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on HTLD. Barclays lifted their price objective on Heartland Express from $10.00 to $11.00 and gave the company an "underweight" rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 13th. UBS Group dropped their target price on Heartland Express from $13.00 to $12.00 and set a "neutral" rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and three have given a hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of "Hold" and an average target price of $11.75.

Insider Activity

In other news, major shareholder Ann S. Gerdin Revocable Trust bought 49,506 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 18th. The stock was purchased at an average price of $12.24 per share, for a total transaction of $605,953.44. Following the completion of the purchase, the insider now owns 898,584 shares in the company, valued at approximately $10,998,668.16. This trade represents a 5.83 % increase in their position. The purchase was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Michael J. Gerdin bought 5,210 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 6th. The stock was acquired at an average cost of $11.49 per share, for a total transaction of $59,862.90. Following the acquisition, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,265,002 shares of the company's stock, valued at $14,534,872.98. The trade was a 0.41 % increase in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders have purchased 153,750 shares of company stock worth $1,786,918. Corporate insiders own 39.60% of the company's stock.

About Heartland Express

Heartland Express, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a short-to-medium, and long-haul truckload carrier in the United States and Canada. It primarily provides nationwide asset-based dry van truckload service for shippers; cross-border freight and other transportation services; and temperature-controlled truckload services.