Value Investing News

Any company could afford to boost distributions in a single year. Any type of business could also have a high yield, especially if it distributes all of its cash flows to shareholders. It takes a special kind of a business model to afford a proper balance between investing back into the business and distributing excess profits to shareholders.

For dividend growth investors, there are certain attributes of investments that are more relevant than others, such as yield and dividend growth. To illustrate the power of dividend growth consider that an investment’s yield-on-cost will double every 5 years if they grow their dividend by 15%/year or 7 years at 10%/year or 14 years at 5%/year.

Last year I introduced the Stock Ideas list and it has proven to be immensely popular. The list consists of Dividend Aristocrats, US Broad Dividend Achievers and U.S. Dividend Champions. Here are some highlights on this year’s changes:

I currently track 100 dividend stocks in my D4L-Dashboard and have determined some of the lower rated stocks could be buys if the companies simply chose to increase their dividends. For various reasons their management has elected keep a low payout ratio and deploy the excess cash elsewhere.

I couldn’t begin to estimate how many different stocks are traded around the world. Though the population of stocks may be large, there are only a precious few that are worthy dividend stocks. When spending my time looking for worthy investments, there are four primary places I look:

Donaldson Company operates as a worldwide manufacturer of filtration systems and replacement parts. Linked here is a detailed stock analysis and commentary.

Dividend investing in the classic implementation focuses on identifying solid companies with a record of growing their dividends each year; and an expectation that it will continue into the future. The focus is not solely on yield but a combination of yield and dividend growth. Often it is the lower yield, higher growth, security that will provide the best return over time.

I view stocks that increase their dividends in this tough environment as defensive, recession proof corporations, who have survived many downturns, recessions and credit crisis. They view the current financial hiccup as only temporary in nature, which in turn shows the confidence in their business models.
The companies that increased their dividend payments to stockholders include: