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

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

First Foundation has a payout ratio of 3.8% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities 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 Stock Down 9.3 %

Shares of FFWM opened at $6.08 on Friday. First Foundation has a 52-week low of $3.69 and a 52-week high of $11.47. The company has a quick ratio of 1.05, a current ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.52. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $7.34 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $7.48. The company has a market capitalization of $343.58 million, a PE ratio of 35.26 and a beta of 1.23.

First Foundation (NASDAQ:FFWM) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, January 25th. The bank reported $0.05 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.02 by $0.03. First Foundation had a negative net margin of 32.44% and a positive return on equity of 1.11%. The firm had revenue of $56.37 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $62.03 million. As a group, equities analysts forecast that First Foundation will post 0.29 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

FFWM has been the subject of several analyst reports. StockNews.com raised shares of First Foundation from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Friday. Wedbush lowered their price objective on First Foundation from $8.00 to $7.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Friday. Finally, Raymond James upgraded First Foundation from an “outperform” rating to a “strong-buy” rating and lifted their target price for the company from $9.50 to $12.00 in a research report on Friday, January 5th.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, Chairman Ulrich E. Keller, Jr. sold 25,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, February 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $8.16, for a total value of $204,000.00. Following the sale, the chairman now directly owns 1,230,622 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $10,041,875.52. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. 10.20% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

First Foundation Company Profile

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.