Dividends rising at Newmont

Article Excerpt

NEWMONT MINING $56.43 (New York symbol NEM; Shares outstanding: 493.7 million; Market cap: $27.9 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 1.4%; www.newmont.com) earned $1.04 a share before one-time items in the three months ended March 31, 2011, up 25.3% from $0.83 a year earlier. The latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $0.99 a share. Revenue rose 9.9%, to $2.5 billion from $2.2 billion. This dividend paying stock continues to benefit from rising gold prices. Newmont now plans to link future dividend hikes to the price of gold: it will raise the quarterly rate by $0.05 a share for each $100 per ounce rise in its average selling price for gold in the preceding quarter. The rise in gold prices in the latest quarter prompted the company to raise its quarterly dividend by 33.3%, to $0.20 a share from $0.15. The new annual rate of $0.80 yields 1.4%. Newmont Mining is a buy. buy…