Not all dividends are created equal. Here, we'll do a top-to-bottom analysis of a company to understand the quality of its dividend and see how it's changed over the past five years.

The company we're looking at today is SeaDrill (Nasdaq: SDRL), which yields 0.8%.

Industry
SeaDrill is a deep-sea driller, competing with other drillers such as DryShips (Nasdaq: DRYS) subsidiary Ocean Rig (Nasdaq: ORIG). Besides the Macando oil disaster, which shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for six months, the industry has largely been doing very well, as high oil prices and new discoveries have kept up demand for deep-sea drilling rigs.

Seadrill Total Return Price Chart

Seadrill Total Return Price Chart by YCharts

Dividend
To evaluate the quality of a dividend, the first thing to consider is whether the company has paid a dividend consistently over the past five years and, if so, how much it has grown.

Seadrill Dividend Chart

Seadrill Dividend Chart by YCharts

SeaDrill's dividend has been slowly rising since its IPO in 2010. The two dips you see in the graph are special dividends the company paid out in addition to its regular quarterly dividend.

 Immediate safety
To understand how safe a dividend is, we use three crucial tools, the first of which is:

  • The interest coverage ratio, or the number of times interest is earned, calculated by dividing earnings before interest and taxes by interest expense. The interest coverage ratio measures a company's ability to pay the interest on its debt. An interest coverage ratio less than 1.5 is questionable; a number less than 1 means that the company is not bringing in enough money to cover its interest expenses.

Seadrill Times Interest Earned TTM Chart

Seadrill Times Interest Earned TTM Chart by YCharts

At 11.36 SeaDrill covers every $1 in interest expense with over $11 in operating earnings.

Sustainability

The other tools we use to evaluate the safety of a dividend are:

  • The EPS payout ratio, or dividends per share divided by earnings per share. The EPS payout ratio measures the percentage of earnings that go toward paying the dividend. A ratio greater than 80% is worrisome.
  • The FCF payout ratio, or dividends per share divided by free cash flow per share. Earnings alone don't always paint a complete picture of a business' health. The FCF payout ratio measures the percentage of free cash flow devoted to paying the dividend. Again, a ratio greater than 80% could be a red flag.

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

SeaDrill has been heavily investing in new drillships, and as such, its free cash flow payout ratio is all over the place. Its earnings payout ratio is near 70% and is more representative of the business.

Alternatives

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

There are some alternatives out there in the industry. SeaDrill has both the highest yield and payout ratio, but Transocean (NYSE: RIG) has the second highest yield at 7.9%. However, it wasn't profitable the past 12 months and sports a negative payout ratio. Diamond Offshore Drilling (NYSE: DO) has a 6.3% yield and very low 6.8% payout ratio. Ensco (NYSE: ESV) rounds out the group with a 3% yield and a 47% payout ratio.

Another tool for better investing
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