Value Investing News

Several companies announced their intent to increase distributions to shareholders. I have separated the dividend raisers of the past week in three groups: dividend achievers, champions and aristocrats; master limited partnerships; and potential dividend achievers

Most casual income investors focus on current yield, which is important. However, if your objective is to build a portfolio of securities with increasing income, then Yield on Cost is an excellent metric to measure your progress.

Checking the pulse of dividend increases is an exercise whose goal is to uncover potential dividend growth plays that I might have otherwise missed out on. Another reason for that is to refute the idea that dividend investing is dead. It is also interesting to look for trends in the data, while browsing through the list of dividend increasers.

MLPs are not like regular corporations and do not get taxed on income. Instead they tend to return most of their income (typically 85 to 90%) to investors or partners through quarterly distributions. This shifts the tax responsibility to the partners, who are taxed at their ordinary income rates.