AGCO Corporation (NYSE:AGCO) stock is about to trade ex-dividend in four days. The ex-dividend date occurs one day before the record date which is the day on which shareholders need to be on the company's books in order to receive a dividend. The ex-dividend date is important as the process of settlement involves two full business days. So if you miss that date, you would not show up on the company's books on the record date. Accordingly, AGCO investors that purchase the stock on or after the 15th of November will not receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 16th of December.

The company's upcoming dividend is US$0.29 a share, following on from the last 12 months, when the company distributed a total of US$3.66 per share to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, AGCO has a trailing yield of 4.0% on the current stock price of US$91.86. We love seeing companies pay a dividend, but it's also important to be sure that laying the golden eggs isn't going to kill our golden goose! So we need to investigate whether AGCO can afford its dividend, and if the dividend could grow.

View our latest analysis for AGCO

If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. AGCO paid out 51% of its earnings to investors last year, a normal payout level for most businesses. Yet cash flows are even more important than profits for assessing a dividend, so we need to see if the company generated enough cash to pay its distribution. The good news is it paid out just 25% of its free cash flow in the last year.

It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously.

Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Companies with falling earnings are riskier for dividend shareholders. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. With that in mind, we're discomforted by AGCO's 8.9% per annum decline in earnings in the past five years. Such a sharp decline casts doubt on the future sustainability of the dividend.

Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. In the last 10 years, AGCO has lifted its dividend by approximately 24% a year on average. Growing the dividend payout ratio while earnings are declining can deliver nice returns for a while, but it's always worth checking for when the company can't increase the payout ratio any more - because then the music stops.