The board of Telstra Group Limited (ASX:TLS) has announced that it will pay a dividend on the 25th of September, with investors receiving A$0.095 per share. Based on this payment, the dividend yield for the company will be 3.9%, which is fairly typical for the industry.

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Telstra Group's Future Dividend Projections Appear Well Covered By Earnings

We aren't too impressed by dividend yields unless they can be sustained over time. Based on the last payment, Telstra Group's profits didn't cover the dividend, but the company was generating enough cash instead. Healthy cash flows are always a positive sign, especially when they quite easily cover the dividend.

Looking forward, earnings per share is forecast to rise by 24.6% over the next year. Under the assumption that the dividend will continue along recent trends, we think the payout ratio could be 74% which would be quite comfortable going to take the dividend forward.

See our latest analysis for Telstra Group

Dividend Volatility

While the company has been paying a dividend for a long time, it has cut the dividend at least once in the last 10 years. The annual payment during the last 10 years was A$0.30 in 2015, and the most recent fiscal year payment was A$0.19. The dividend has shrunk at around 4.5% a year during that period. A company that decreases its dividend over time generally isn't what we are looking for.

Telstra Group May Find It Hard To Grow The Dividend

Given that the dividend has been cut in the past, we need to check if earnings are growing and if that might lead to stronger dividends in the future. Earnings per share has been crawling upwards at 4.5% per year. So the company has struggled to grow its EPS yet it's still paying out 101% of its earnings. As they say in finance, 'past performance is not indicative of future performance', but we are not confident a company with limited earnings growth and a high payout ratio will be a star dividend-payer over the next decade.

Our Thoughts On Telstra Group's Dividend

Overall, this is probably not a great income stock, even though the dividend is being raised at the moment. The company is generating plenty of cash, which could maintain the dividend for a while, but the track record hasn't been great. We would probably look elsewhere for an income investment.

Investors generally tend to favour companies with a consistent, stable dividend policy as opposed to those operating an irregular one. Still, investors need to consider a host of other factors, apart from dividend payments, when analysing a company. For example, we've picked out 2 warning signs for Telstra Group that investors should know about before committing capital to this stock. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of high yield dividend stocks.

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