Dividend Growth Investor Newsletter

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Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Your future retirement income is on sale

The stock market has finally started going down. This is great news for those investors, who are in the accumulation phase. When you are able to purchase shares are lower entry prices, you end up purchasing future dividend income on sale. Investors in the accumulation phase should therefore be praying for lower prices during their work careers.

Retirees should ignore stock price fluctuations and focus on their dividend checks. This is where it pays to focus on dividend dependability for each company you bought in the first place.

Intelligent dividend investors view stocks as partial ownership shares of real businesses. They do their research in uncovering those businesses, and then try to buy existing owners out at bargain prices. They can then sit back, monitor their business interests, and collect dividends one check at a time. After all, if you owned an apartment building next to a college that is always occupied, you won’t give a damn if their quoted valued fell by 5% - 10%- 20% in one single day. As long as you can rent your building out, you should do just fine by ignoring “quoted values”.

I am starting to get giddy for a change. While I have hit my objectives, I am still saving and investing. This is why I will continue buying one or twice per month, whenever I have money to invest. Some of my money is automatically invested through my 401 (k), while the rest is invested manually in my taxable accounts.

It is important to stick to the plan of earning money, saving money and investing money on a regular basis, and staying the course through thick or thin. As you can imagine, long-term investing is a marathon, not a sprint. This is why it is important to keep investing for years, while building out that cash machine.

You then need to be able to stay invested throughout your retirement years, while living off those dividends.

For my taxable accounts, I usually screen the list of dividend champions regularly, using the following entry criteria:

1) A ten year track record of annual dividend increases (being a dividend champion is more than enough)
2) Having a forward P/E at or below 20
3) Having a dividend payout ratio below 70%
4) Having earnings per share growth over the past decade
5) Having a more than nominal dividend growth over the past decade ( at least 3%/year)

I came up with the following list of thirty dividend champions for further research:



Symbol
Name
Years of Annual Dividend Increases
P/E ratio
Dividend Yield
Dividend Payout Ratio
Last Price
10 Year Dividend Growth
(T)
AT&T Inc.
34
12.59
5.35%
67.35%
36.63
3.28%
(AFL)
AFLAC Inc.
35
12.77
2.00%
25.48%
86.21
8.08%
(MO)
Altria Group Inc.
48
16.72
3.77%
63.04%
66.04
11.26%
(CPKF)
Chesapeake Financial Shares
26
14.22
1.23%
17.51%
30.85
7.70%
(UMBF)
UMB Financial Corp.
26
16.33
1.39%
22.72%
73.31
6.37%
(CBU)
Community Bank System
25
17.47
2.50%
43.62%
52.07
4.84%
(KMB)
Kimberly-Clark Corp.
45
16.12
3.42%
55.19%
111.88
6.75%
(TROW)
T. Rowe Price Group
31
15.14
2.14%
32.37%
105.25
12.86%
(LEG)
Leggett & Platt Inc.
46
17.52
3.22%
56.45%
43.45
7.18%
(PPG)
PPG Industries Inc.
46
16.97
1.47%
25.00%
111.98
5.24%
(UGI)
UGI Corp.
30
17.36
2.17%
37.60%
44.79
7.31%
(SCL)
Stepan Company
50
16.47
1.15%
18.89%
71.47
7.37%
(PNR)
Pentair Ltd.
42
17.42
2.02%
35.20%
68.28
8.69%
(RPM)
RPM International Inc.
44
16.21
2.49%
40.40%
48.94
5.49%
(SRCE)
1st Source Corp.
30
15.05
1.49%
22.36%
49.81
4.09%
(CSVI)
Computer Services Inc.
46
19.17
2.61%
50.00%
45.25
15.07%
(WBA)
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.
42
12.23
2.20%
26.91%
70.43
16.21%
(CBSH)
Commerce Bancshares
49
16.74
1.50%
25.07%
56.75
4.41%
(SWK)
Stanley Black & Decker
50
18.76
1.50%
28.11%
158.15
7.09%
(HRL)
Hormel Foods Corp.
52
19.11
2.09%
40.00%
32.49
16.32%
(SHW)
Sherwin-Williams Co.
39
20.97
0.86%
18.08%
393.23
10.44%
(ATO)
Atmos Energy
34
20.76
2.27%
47.12%
79.31
3.63%
(GD)
General Dynamics
26
18.74
1.55%
29.10%
211.22
11.54%
(MDT)
Medtronic plc
40
17.07
2.19%
37.32%
81.42
14.24%
(EV)
Eaton Vance Corp.
37
16.71
2.11%
35.28%
54.48
8.47%
(TMP)
Tompkins Financial Corp.
31
14.29
2.25%
32.20%
79.88
4.91%
(MKC)
McCormick & Co.
32
20.98
1.81%
38.02%
101.53
8.92%
(BMS)
Bemis Company
34
16.04
2.63%
42.20%
45.24
3.63%
(BDX)
Becton Dickinson & Co.
46
20.66
1.30%
26.84%
224.82
11.61%
(JNJ)
Johnson & Johnson
55
16.10
2.52%
40.49%
130.39
7.44%


None of these are recommendations for your to invest in. Rather, this is an example of the process I go through to identify quality dividend companies for further research, and potentially invest into.

It is quite possible that the quoted prices on the securities listed above nosedive from here. If you are going to be a buyer of equities over the next several years or even decades, you should be rooting for lower prices, as long as fundamentals are solid of course. Stock price declines are a normal part of the long-term investing game. To paraphrase Warren Buffett, if you are not willing to sit through a 50% decline in the price of common stocks, you should not be in equities.

As a part owner of solid businesses, your goal is simple:

1) Buy quality businesses at attractive valuations
2) Focus on the fundamentals ( growth in earnings, revenues, dividends + dividend safety)
3) Either reinvest dividends in the accumulation phase or spend them in retirement phase
4) Ignore all noise ( short term price fluctuations)

I believe that the patient accumulation of quality companies on a regular basis, coupled with low costs, and patient reinvestment of dividends along with new cash contributions are the key to long-term success in investing.


Relevant Articles:

Lower Entry Prices Mean Locking Higher Yields Today
Your Retirement Income is on Sale!
- How to value dividend stocks
Dividend Investors Should Ignore Market Fluctuations