First Foundation Inc. (NASDAQ:FFWM) Plans $0.01 Quarterly Dividend

First Foundation Inc. (NASDAQ:FFWM) declared a quarterly dividend on Friday, April 26th, Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Monday, May 6th will be paid a dividend of 0.01 per share by the bank on Thursday, May 16th. This represents a $0.04 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.66%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, May 3rd.

First Foundation has a dividend payout ratio of 3.8% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect First Foundation to earn $1.03 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.04 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 3.9%.

First Foundation Trading Down 9.3 %

Shares of NASDAQ FFWM traded down $0.62 during midday trading on Friday, reaching $6.08. 608,647 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 596,264. The company has a current ratio of 1.05, a quick ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.52. The company has a market capitalization of $343.58 million, a P/E ratio of -1.82 and a beta of 1.23. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $7.38 and a 200-day moving average price of $7.48. First Foundation has a 52-week low of $3.69 and a 52-week high of $11.47.

First Foundation (NASDAQ:FFWM) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, January 25th. The bank reported $0.05 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.02 by $0.03. The business had revenue of $56.37 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $62.03 million. First Foundation had a positive return on equity of 1.80% and a negative net margin of 31.95%. Equities research analysts expect that First Foundation will post 0.29 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

FFWM has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Wedbush dropped their price objective on shares of First Foundation from $8.00 to $7.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Friday. Raymond James raised shares of First Foundation from an “outperform” rating to a “strong-buy” rating and increased their price target for the stock from $9.50 to $12.00 in a research note on Friday, January 5th.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other First Foundation news, Chairman Ulrich E. Keller, Jr. sold 25,000 shares of First Foundation stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, February 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $8.16, for a total transaction of $204,000.00. Following the transaction, the chairman now directly owns 1,230,622 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $10,041,875.52. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Corporate insiders own 10.20% of the company’s stock.

About First Foundation

First Foundation Inc, through its subsidiaries, provides banking services, investment advisory, wealth management, and trust services to individuals, businesses, and other organizations in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Banking and Wealth Management. It offers a range of deposit products, including personal and business checking accounts, savings accounts, interest-bearing demand deposit accounts, money market accounts, and time certificate of deposits; and loan products consisting of multifamily and single family residential real estate loans, commercial real estate loans, commercial term loans, and line of credits, as well as consumer loans, such as personal installment loans and line of credits, and home equity line of credits.