International Game Technology (NYSE:IGT) Is Paying Out A Dividend Of $0.20
AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10bn in marketcap - there is still time to get in early.
We like to see robust dividend yields, but that doesn't matter if the payment isn't sustainable. International Game Technology is not generating a profit, but its free cash flows easily cover the dividend, leaving plenty for reinvestment in the business. In general, cash flows are more important than the more traditional measures of profit so we feel pretty comfortable with the dividend at this level.
Over the next year, EPS is forecast to rise by 65.4%. While it is good to see income moving in the right direction, it still looks like the company won't achieve profitability. The healthy cash flows are definitely a good sign though, so we wouldn't panic just yet, especially with the earnings growing.
View our latest analysis for International Game Technology
The company has a long dividend track record, but it doesn't look great with cuts in the past. The last annual payment of $0.80 was flat on the annual payment from10 years ago. We're glad to see the dividend has risen, but with a limited rate of growth and fluctuations in the payments the total shareholder return may be limited.
With a relatively unstable dividend, it's even more important to evaluate if earnings per share is growing, which could point to a growing dividend in the future. It's encouraging to see that International Game Technology has been growing its earnings per share at 62% a year over the past five years. While the company is not yet turning a profit, it is growing at a good rate. If the company can turn a profit relatively soon, we can see this becoming a reliable income stock.
Overall, we don't think this company makes a great dividend stock, even though the dividend wasn't cut this year. 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 be a touch cautious of relying on this stock primarily for the dividend income.
Companies possessing a stable dividend policy will likely enjoy greater investor interest than those suffering from a more inconsistent approach. However, there are other things to consider for investors when analysing stock performance. As an example, we've identified 1 warning sign for International Game Technology that you should be aware of before investing. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of high yield dividend stocks.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Wire
15 minutes ago
- Business Wire
Shift4 Completes Acquisition of Global Blue
CENTER VALLEY, Pa. & SIGNY, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Shift4 Payments, Inc. ('Shift4') (NYSE: FOUR), the leader in integrated payments and commerce technology, and Global Blue Group Holding AG ('Global Blue') (NYSE: GB), the leading specialty payments and technology platform enabling tax-free shopping, dynamic currency conversion, and payments solutions to the world's largest retail brands, today announced the successful completion of the tender offer by GT Holding 1 GmbH, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Shift4, to purchase the outstanding shares of Global Blue (the 'Shares') for $7.50 per common share in cash (the 'Tender Offer'). 'This marks the largest acquisition in Shift4's history and reinforces our track record of bold moves that expand our capabilities and deliver the most comprehensive commerce offering in the industry,' said Shift4 CEO Taylor Lauber. 'By integrating Global Blue into our end-to-end platform, we're further expanding our global reach and solidifying our position as a leading unified commerce provider that adds meaningful value to our merchants around the world.' With over 40 years of history, Global Blue is a market leader at the intersection of travel and luxury retail across Europe, Asia, and South America. Hundreds of thousands of premium retail and hospitality locations rely on Global Blue's tax-refund and currency conversion technology, including the world's most iconic luxury and premium retailers as well as other large retail electronics, sportswear and fast fashion brands. Global Blue is the market share leader in the tax-free shopping category, a service that is essential for retailers and other merchants catering to international travelers. Global Blue's merchant solutions will be added to Shift4's global payments platform to deliver an enhanced end-to-end experience for its merchants. The addition of tax refund and currency conversion capabilities enhances Shift4's position as an innovative vendor and trusted partner. Global Blue is the most comprehensive two-sided network in its category, connecting millions of affluent international shoppers to its merchants and directly engaging with international shoppers through its proprietary app, creating powerful network effects and allowing for further product innovation, such as loyalty, digital marketing, and more. Now that the acquisition has closed, Shift4 and Global Blue will soon plan to launch an all-in-one payment terminal to provide VAT refund, DCC, and payment processing services to global merchants. The combined company will be the only provider in the market delivering a complete solution for merchants that combines these three services in a single device. As a result of the transaction, Ant International and Tencent will become strategic partners with Shift4. The partnership will explore collaboration on global e-commerce payment products, including the distribution of global e-wallet gateway service Alipay+, which connects global merchants with 1.7 billion user accounts of 36 digital payment methods across the world, and WeChat Pay, the most widely used mobile payment service in China, throughout the Shift4 ecosystem. The Tender Offer expired as scheduled at one minute after 11:59 p.m. (New York City time) on July 2, 2025. Equiniti Trust Company, LLC, the depositary and paying agent for the Tender Offer, has advised Shift4 and Global Blue that as of the expiration of the Tender Offer, 233,862,778 Shares had been validly tendered and not properly withdrawn pursuant to the Tender Offer, representing in the aggregate approximately 97.37% of the issued and outstanding Shares. All of the conditions to the consummation of the Tender Offer have been satisfied, and Shift4 has accepted for payment and will promptly pay for all Shares that have been validly tendered and not properly withdrawn in accordance with the terms of the Tender Offer Statement on Schedule TO filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the 'SEC') on March 21, 2025, as amended. Effective immediately following the completion of the Tender Offer, the current directors of Global Blue were replaced with those Shift4 appointed directors as approved by the Global Blue shareholders at the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders held on May 6, 2025. As previously announced, Shift4 intends to cause Global Blue to delist its shares from NYSE and effect a squeeze-out merger under Swiss law to acquire all remaining 2.63% of outstanding Shares. About Shift4 Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR) is boldly redefining commerce by simplifying complex payments ecosystems across the world. As the leader in commerce-enabling technology, Shift4 powers billions of transactions annually for hundreds of thousands of businesses in virtually every industry. For more information, visit About Global Blue Global Blue (NYSE: GB) is the business partner for the shopping journey, providing technology and services to enhance the experience and drive performance. With over 40 years of expertise, today we connect thousands of retailers, acquirers, and hotels with nearly 80 million consumers across 52 countries, in three industries: Tax Free Shopping, Payments and Post-Purchase solutions. For more information, visit Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Each of Shift4 and Global Blue intend such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements contained in this press release that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Shift4's or Global Blue's, as applicable, respective expectations associated with the acquisition of Global Blue by Shift4, including the completion of the squeeze-out merger, the benefits, synergies, efficiencies, and opportunities arising from the acquisition, and the timing of any of the foregoing. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause each of our actual results, performance or achievements, respectively, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to the substantial and increasingly intense competition worldwide in the financial services, payments and payment technology industries; each of our ability to continue to expand our respective share of the existing payment processing markets or expand into new markets; additional risks associated with each of our expansion into international operations, including compliance with and changes in foreign governmental policies, as well as exposure to foreign exchange rates; and each of our respective ability to integrate and interoperate each of our services and products with a variety of operating systems, software, devices, and web browsers, and the other important factors discussed under the caption 'Risk Factors' in Part I, Item 1A in Shift4's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2024, under the caption 'Key Items – Risk Factors' in Item 3(D) in Global Blue's Annual Report on Form 20-F for the years ended March 31, 2025 and March 31, 2024 and each of our other filings with the SEC, respectively. Any such forward-looking statements represent management's expectations as of the date of this press release. While we may elect to update such forward-looking statements at some point in the future, each of Shift4 and Global Blue, disclaim any obligation to do so, even if subsequent events cause each of our views to change, respectively.
CNN
19 minutes ago
- CNN
A couple tried for 18 years to get pregnant. AI made it happen
AI Maternal health Women's health FacebookTweetLink After trying to conceive for 18 years, one couple is now pregnant with their first child thanks to the power of artificial intelligence. The couple had undergone several rounds of in vitro fertilization, or IVF, visiting fertility centers around the world in the hopes of having a baby. The IVF process involves removing a woman's egg and combining it with sperm in a laboratory to create an embryo, which is then implanted in the womb. But for this couple, the IVF attempts were unsuccessful due to azoospermia, a rare condition in which no measurable sperm are present in the male partner's semen, which can lead to male infertility. A typical semen sample contains hundreds of millions of sperm, but men with azoospermia have such low counts that no sperm cells can be found, even after hours of meticulous searching under a microscope. So the couple, who wish to remain anonymous to protect their privacy, went to the Columbia University Fertility Center to try a novel approach. It's called the STAR method, and it uses AI to help identify and recover hidden sperm in men who once thought they had no sperm at all. All the husband had to do was leave a semen sample with the medical team. 'We kept our hopes to a minimum after so many disappointments,' the wife said in an emailed statement. Researchers at the fertility center analyzed the semen sample with the AI system. Three hidden sperm were found, recovered and used to fertilize the wife's eggs via IVF, and she became the first successful pregnancy enabled by the STAR method. The baby is due in December. 'It took me two days to believe I was actually pregnant,' she said. 'I still wake up in the morning and can't believe if this is true or not. I still don't believe I am pregnant until I see the scans.' Artificial intelligence has advanced the field of fertility care in the United States: More medical facilities are using AI to help assess egg quality or screen for healthy embryos when patients are undergoing IVF. There's still more research and testing needed, but AI may now be making advancements in male infertility, in particular. Dr. Zev Williams, director of the Columbia University Fertility Center, and his colleagues spent five years developing the STAR method to help detect and recover sperm in semen samples from people who had azoospermia. They were struck by the system's results. 'A patient provided a sample, and highly skilled technicians looked for two days through that sample to try to find sperm. They didn't find any. We brought it to the AI-based STAR System. In one hour, it found 44 sperm. So right then, we realized, 'Wow, this is really a game-changer. This is going to make such a big difference for patients,' ' said Williams, who led the research team. When a semen sample is placed on a specially designed chip under a microscope, the STAR system – which stands for Sperm Tracking and Recovery – connects to the microscope through a high-speed camera and high-powered imaging technology to scan the sample, taking more than 8 million images in under an hour to find what it has been trained to identify as a sperm cell. The system instantly isolates that sperm cell into a tiny droplet of media, allowing embryologists to recover cells that they may never have been able to find or identify with their own eyes. 'It's like searching for a needle scattered across a thousand haystacks, completing the search in under an hour and doing it so gently, without any harmful lasers or stains, that the sperm can still be used to fertilize an egg,' Williams said. 'What's remarkable is that instead of the usual [200 million] to 300 million sperm in a typical sample, these patients may have just two or three. Not 2 [million] or 3 million, literally two or three,' he said. 'But with the precision of the STAR system and the expertise of our embryologists, even those few can be used to successfully fertilize an egg.' It's estimated that the male partner accounts for up to 40% of all infertility cases in the United States, and up to 10% of men with infertility are azoospermic. 'This often is a really heartbreaking and shocking and unexpected diagnosis,' Williams said. 'Most men who have azoospermia feel completely healthy and normal. There's no impairment of their sexual function, and the semen looks normal, too. The difference is that when you look at it under a microscope, instead of seeing literally hundreds of millions of sperm swimming, you just see cell debris and fragments but no sperm.' Treatment options for azoospermia traditionally have included uncomfortable surgery to retrieve sperm directly from a patient's testes. 'A part of the testes gets removed and broken into little pieces, and you try to find sperm there,' Williams said. 'It's invasive. You can only do it a couple of times before there could be permanent scarring and damage to the testes, and it's painful.' Other treatment options may include prescription hormone medications – but that will be effective only if the person has an imbalance of hormones. If no other treatment options are successful, couples may use donor sperm to have a child. Williams said the STAR method can be a new option. 'It really was a team effort to develop this, and that's what really drove and motivated everybody, the fact that you can now help couples who otherwise couldn't have that opportunity,' he said. Although the method is currently available only at the Columbia University Fertility Center, Williams and his colleagues want to publish their work and share it with other fertility centers. Using the STAR method to find, isolate and freeze sperm for a patient would cost a little under $3,000 total, he said. 'Infertility is unique in a way in that it's such an ancient part of the human experience. It's literally biblical. It's something we've had to contend with through all of human history,' he said. 'It's amazing to think that the most advanced technologies that we currently have are being used to solve this really ancient problem.' It's not the first time doctors have turned to AI to help men with azoospermia. A separate research team in Canada built an AI model that could automate and accelerate the process of searching for rare sperm in samples from men with the condition. 'The reason AI is so well-suited for this is AI really relies on learning – showing it an image of what a sperm looks like, what the shape is, what characteristics it should have – and then being able to use that learning algorithm to help identify that specific image that you're looking for,' said Dr. Sevann Helo, a urologist at Mayo Clinic with specialty interest in male infertility and male sexual dysfunction, who was not involved in the STAR method or the research in Canada. 'It's very exciting,' she said. 'AI, in general, at least in the medical community, I think is a whole new landscape and really will revolutionize the way we look at a lot of problems in medicine.' The STAR method is a novel approach to identifying sperm, but AI has been used in many other ways within fertility medicine too, said Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh, a San Francisco-based reproductive endocrinologist and host of the podcast 'The Egg Whisperer Show.' 'AI is helping us see what our eyes can't,' Eyvazzadeh, who was not involved in the development of STAR, wrote in an email. For instance, AI algorithms, such as one called Stork-A, have been used to analyze early-stage embryos and predict with 'surprising accuracy' which ones are likely to be healthy. Another AI tool, CHLOE, can assess the quality of a woman's eggs before she may freeze them for future use. 'AI is being used to personalize IVF medication protocols, making cycles more efficient and less of a guessing game. It's also helping with sperm selection, identifying the healthiest sperm even in difficult samples. And AI can now even predict IVF success rates with more precision than ever before, using massive data sets to give patients personalized guidance,' Eyvazzadeh said. 'The common thread? Better decisions, more confidence, and a more compassionate experience for patients.' The new STAR system is 'a game-changer,' she said. 'AI isn't creating sperm – it's helping us find the rare, viable ones that are already there but nearly invisible,' she said. 'It's a breakthrough not because it replaces human expertise, but because it amplifies it – and that's the future of fertility care.' But there is also a growing concern that the rushed application of AI in reproductive medicine could give false hope to patients, said Dr. Gianpiero Palermo, professor of embryology and director of andrology and assisted fertilization at Weill Cornell Medicine. 'AI is gaining a lot of traction nowadays to offer unbiased evaluation on embryos by looking at embryo morphology,' Palermo said in an email. 'However, current available models are still somewhat inconsistent and require additional validation.' Palermo said the STAR approach needs to be validated and would still require human embryologists to pick up sperm and inject them into an egg to create an embryo for patients undergoing IVF. 'Maybe the AI addition may help to retrieve the spermatozoon a little faster and maybe one more than the embryologist,' said Palermo, who was not involved in the development of STAR but was the first to describe the method of injecting sperm directly into an egg. Since he pioneered that method, it has become the most-utilized assisted reproductive technology in the world. 'In my opinion, this approach is faulty because inevitably some men will have no spermatozoa,' Palermo said of the STAR method, 'doesn't matter how their specimens are screened whether by humans or a machine.'
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
AI gives birth to fresh hope against male infertility
Artificial intelligence could make all the difference for would-be parents undergoing IVF and who are struggling with the most severe forms of male infertility. The first Australian study of new technology has led to one live birth and five pregnancies in 12 months among 35 couples who would previously be considered infertile. "These are the most difficult cases that we see at an IVF clinic, so it's very motivating to be able to help people that in a normal world, naturally would never ever be able to have their own children," IVF Australia embryologist Dale Goss told AAP. "It's great to see translation from a science project, essentially a few years ago, and a proof of concept into something that's delivered in the clinic and actually see a healthy baby boy born." The NeoGenix Biosciences employee presented the findings from the first AI SpermSearch clinical study to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Paris overnight. The system works by searching for the best sperm in semen samples taken from biopsies, offering embryologists another tool to select the most appropriate sperm to be used in IVF. Mr Goss said embryologists could often spend up to six hours looking for enough of the right tiny swimmers but the technology was shown to reduce search times by 75 per cent. "We found that our reducing the time to search, we were able to get through more samples, find more sperm and give these patients a better chance at having their own biological children," he said. The technology was given early access approval for research purposes at Sydney-based Virtus Health but Mr Goss hopes it could be approved for wider use across Australia by the end of the year. About 16 per cent of couples struggle with fertility, according to Family Planning NSW, while 1 in 18 babies in Australia are born through IVF each year. NSW couple Marcela and Rowan Moon experienced infertility until tests confirmed Mr Moon's semen had no sperm because of a genetic condition. "When they told us that Rowan was infertile, I thought 'oh my God I can't have a child with Rowan being the father biologically' and then they said 'no, it's not like that, we can still do it'," Ms Moon said. Mr Moon had a biopsy as a day procedure and doctors took a sample, which was then used to create embryos. The first transfer was hailed a success and the couple later welcomed son Leo. "We were so lucky to get Leo first off the bat ... I don't think we really realised the rollercoaster that it was going to be," Mr Moon said.
