C&F Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:CFFI) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next three days. The ex-dividend date is one business day before the record date, which is the cut-off date for shareholders to be present on the company's books to be eligible for a dividend payment. The ex-dividend date is important because any transaction on a stock needs to have been settled before the record date in order to be eligible for a dividend. Therefore, if you purchase C&F Financial's shares on or after the 14th of March, you won't be eligible to receive the dividend, when it is paid on the 1st of April.

The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.44 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$1.76 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, C&F Financial stock has a trailing yield of around 3.4% on the current share price of US$51.99. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether C&F Financial's dividend is reliable and sustainable. So we need to check whether the dividend payments are covered, and if earnings are growing.

See our latest analysis for C&F Financial

Dividends are typically paid out of company income, so if a company pays out more than it earned, its dividend is usually at a higher risk of being cut. C&F Financial paid out a comfortable 25% of its profit last year.

Companies that pay out less in dividends than they earn in profits generally have more sustainable dividends. The lower the payout ratio, the more wiggle room the business has before it could be forced to cut the dividend.

Click here to see how much of its profit C&F Financial paid out over the last 12 months.

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Companies with consistently growing earnings per share generally make the best dividend stocks, as they usually find it easier to grow dividends per share. If earnings fall far enough, the company could be forced to cut its dividend. With that in mind, we're encouraged by the steady growth at C&F Financial, with earnings per share up 6.3% on average over the last five years.

Another key way to measure a company's dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. C&F Financial has delivered 4.3% dividend growth per year on average over the past 10 years. It's encouraging to see the company lifting dividends while earnings are growing, suggesting at least some corporate interest in rewarding shareholders.

To Sum It Up

Has C&F Financial got what it takes to maintain its dividend payments? C&F Financial has seen its earnings per share grow slowly in recent years, and the company reinvests more than half of its profits in the business, which generally bodes well for its future prospects. C&F Financial ticks a lot of boxes for us from a dividend perspective, and we think these characteristics should mark the company as deserving of further attention.