Greene County Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:GCBC) is about to trade ex-dividend in the next 4 days. Typically, the ex-dividend date is one business day before the record date which is the date on which a company determines the shareholders eligible to receive a dividend. The ex-dividend date is important because any transaction on a stock needs to have been settled before the record date in order to be eligible for a dividend. This means that investors who purchase Greene County Bancorp's shares on or after the 11th of August will not receive the dividend, which will be paid on the 31st of August.

The company's next dividend payment will be US$0.08 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of US$0.32 to shareholders. Based on the last year's worth of payments, Greene County Bancorp stock has a trailing yield of around 0.9% on the current share price of $34.21. Dividends are an important source of income to many shareholders, but the health of the business is crucial to maintaining those dividends. That's why we should always check whether the dividend payments appear sustainable, and if the company is growing.

View our latest analysis for Greene County Bancorp

If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. Greene County Bancorp has a low and conservative payout ratio of just 16% of its income after tax.

Companies that pay out less in dividends than they earn in profits generally have more sustainable dividends. The lower the payout ratio, the more wiggle room the business has before it could be forced to cut the dividend.

Click here to see how much of its profit Greene County Bancorp paid out over the last 12 months.

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Companies with consistently growing earnings per share generally make the best dividend stocks, as they usually find it easier to grow dividends per share. If business enters a downturn and the dividend is cut, the company could see its value fall precipitously. For this reason, we're glad to see Greene County Bancorp's earnings per share have risen 16% per annum over the last five years.

Many investors will assess a company's dividend performance by evaluating how much the dividend payments have changed over time. Greene County Bancorp has delivered 6.2% dividend growth per year on average over the past 10 years. We're glad to see dividends rising alongside earnings over a number of years, which may be a sign the company intends to share the growth with shareholders.