Last year, we got an 8% dividend yield. Analysts have a similar cash sum forecast for this year and next. If that happens, anyone who bought in early 2015 would see a 24% three-year return on their investment from dividends alone!

Will it happen? Chief executive Bob Dudley seems confident it will, telling us at 2015 results time of BP’s expected longer-term growth expectation. He said it “underpins our commitment to sustaining our dividend and then growing free cash flow and shareholder distributions over the long term“.

How long dividends can be maintained at these levels is dependent on the price of the black stuff. But the daily commentary is focused on the short term, and the real question is over the timescale of the recovery, not whether it will happen. Mr Dudley has long said we could be in for a few years of cheap oil, but he still has confidence in BP’s dividend.

Oily support

If you fancy a picks and shovels candidate, which should do well from the oil business in the long term no matter which of the explorers and producers thrive or fail, you could do a lot worse than Petrofac (LSE: PFC). It provides services to the firms at the cutting edge, including designing, building and maintaining oil and gas facilities among other offerings.

Though it has struggled a bit during the downturn and its shares have lost 40% to 873p over the past two years, forecasters expect a return to health this year. With 2015 results, Petrofac told us it expects to “deliver net profit in 2016 consistent with our previous guidance“. Net debt dropped in 2015, to $686m from $733m a year previously, and with a strong order backlog the company said it has “excellent revenue visibility for 2016 and beyond, with embedded margins consistent with guidance“.

All of that, to me, lends confidence to Petrofac’s dividend, which was maintained in 2015 for a 5.8% yield. Analysts expect the same cash this year, with a modest recent share price uptick dropping the mooted yield a little to 5.3%, and it should be very firmly covered by earnings.

Is small beautiful?

Big and reliable dividends from tiny companies are perhaps less common, but Netplay TV (LSE: NPT), with a market cap of just £30m, has provided shareholders with ordinary dividend yields of better than 7.5% for two years. Similar cash levels are forecast for this year and next. A 37% share price rise since the end of 2015, to 10.1p, has dropped the predicted yield to 5.6%, but that’s still tasty and would be around twice covered by forecast earnings.

Netplay is behind gaming and gambling offerings like SuperCasino.com and Jackpot247.com. It’s a competitive market for sure, but Netplay seems to be doing well, reporting a 14% rise in active players in the year to December 2015 and bringing in net revenue of £26.3m.

And the dividend? Chief executive Bjarke Larsen said Netplay is set to “to drive growth and deliver shareholder value“. The firm had a spare £2m to hand back to shareholders and the resulting special payment of 0.68p per share took the total to 1.24p — for a total yield of 17% on the 2015 year-end share price.

The post Time To Snap Up Great Dividends From BP plc, Petrofac Limited & Netplay TV Plc? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.

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Alan Oscroft has no position in any shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK owns shares of and has recommended Petrofac. The Motley Fool UK has recommended BP. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

Decent-value buy

Netplay has had to negotiate regulatory changes that saw betting and gaming duties rise to £3.8m this year from £0.5m in 2015. The company more than offset the rise by slashing marketing expenses by £4m with a more targeted strategy, and also by reducing operating and administrative costs.

Netplay has a strong balance sheet with £10.8m of corporate cash and no debt, putting it in a good position for pursuing acquisitions as well as organic growth. Management recently looked at purchasing the Football Pools business from Sportech, but decided against entering a sealed-bid auction process, which suggests the board are only interested in doing the right deals at the right price.

Trading on 13.8 times last year’s earnings at a share price of 10.5p, and with cash representing 3.7p a share, Netplay appears a decent-value buy. A dividend yield of 6.3% (which excludes the special) is an added attraction.

Good business but rich rating

Lighting firm FW Thorpe (LSE: TFW) released half-year results this morning, and also saw its shares rise (up 7% as I write). Like-for-like earnings were 7.5% higher, but actual earnings rose 14% thanks to the contribution of an acquisition.

The strong performance, and £22m cash and no debt on the balance sheet, have persuaded Thorpe’s board to pay a 2p a share special dividend on top of a 1.2p ordinary dividend.

Thorpe is a old family-run business, and the board tends not to be gushing about performance and prospects: thus, underlying growth was generally “solid rather than astounding” and management is “cautiously optimistic” about the rest of the financial year.

Thorpe’s shares have had a strong run, and while this is a company I very much like, the current share price of 236p gives a rich rating of 22.6 times trailing 12-month earnings and yield of 1.6% (excluding the special dividend). Not a price at which I’m rushing to buy.

Risky and speculative

News this morning from Amur Minerals (LSE: AMC) didn’t get the positive response from the market that the results from Netplay and Thorpe received. The shares of the nickel-copper explorer with projects in the far east of Russia are down 2.3%, as I write.

Nevertheless, the news was positive. The company reported that it had completed the annually-constructed 350km ice road to its Kun-Manie project and begun the restocking of the site for its 2016 drilling programme. Amur also said it anticipates being able to release results soon showing a successful conversion of 2015’s targeted Inferred resource area to Indicated and to have successfully added 400 metres of Inferred resource.

Given the stage of development and the geo-political location, Amur remains a risky and speculative proposition, well outside my personal comfort zone.

The post Should You Buy Netplay TV Plc, FW Thorpe plc And Amur Minerals Corporation On Today’s News? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.

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G A Chester has no position in any shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK owns shares of FW Thorpe. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.