Evaluation of the portfolio

The first anniversary of this blog is just a couple of weeks away!
In the past 11 months I've bought 9 high quality stocks.

During my first year as a Dividend Growth Investor, I tried to focus on dividend yield. As this yield generates money to buy more stocks. However, I'm here for the long run. This means growth is a huge factor in growing the snowball.

That's why I created the table below to evaluate the balance between yield and growth.
It is available at the second tab of my portfolio page.

As you can see, most of my high yield (3%+) stocks, don't have extraordinary growth numbers. It would be amazing if I could average the growth numbers to double digits, while maintaining the 3% yield as well.

While I don't think aiming for double digit growth should be a goal itself, I do think it would be a good idea to focus on growth during my second year of investing.

To prove there are great companies out there with double digit growth numbers, I've extended my watchlist. It now features both yield and 3-yr DGR numbers. In addition to this, I've marked some great companies like DOV, MMM, TROW, HP and ADM in bold. This means these companies have double digit growth numbers in the DGR-5, DGR-3 and DGR-1 categories.

Have a great weekend!

Recent buy - May

Procter & Gamble (PG)
Buy: 13 shares @ 80.30

Before I started this blog, I never heard of Procter & Gamble.
It is a huge American company, but they do not operate with that name in Europe.

However, many of their companies are very well known through all of Europe. For example: Oral B, Gilette, Pampers, BrAun, Head & Shoulders and Duracell.

So what about the interesting numbers?

Dividend yield: 3.33%
3yr growth rate: 7.2%
5yr growth rate: 8.0%
P/E: 23.59

Besides these numbers, they have been raising their dividend for 59 years in a row!

The growth rates could have been better, but this yield is pretty decent for a Dividend Aristocrat like PG.

This adds $34.47 to my annual dividend income.
My portfolio has been updated accordingly.

Thanks for reading!


Disclosure: Long PG

Dividend income & dividend raise!

April was not the most lucrative month of all times, but every penny helps.

Dividend income

KO paid me $13.53 for the 41 stocks I own.

In order to achieve the annual $300 of dividends, I should have received $100 by now.
Unfortunately the sum of received dividends is stuck at $75.91.
However, 15% tax is already deducted from the $75.91, so the gross amount of dividends is around $89. I'm not sure whether I meant gross or net when I set the $300 goal..

Being behind schedule gives me motivation to research new investment oppertunities, so expect to see more information on that, as soon as possible!

Dividend raise

My nice friends over at Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) decided to give me a 7.1% raise!
I'm wondering why I'm working so hard at the office. They provided me with a 0% raise, last January. On the other hand, in order to obtain this 7.1% raise, I did absolutely nothing.
Do you see a pattern here? :-)

JNJ raised their quarterly dividend from $0.70 to $0.75.

Thanks for reading!

Dividend Income - March 2015

March was a good month for me. Five of the seven companies I'm invested in, were paying their dividends this month.

JNJ $11.20
TGT $14.56
AFL $7.41
CVX $10.70
MCD $9.35

Total: $53.22

This brings the total dividends received in 2015 at $65.82.
Looking at my goal to receive $300 in dividends by the end of the year, this number is not sufficient.

It means I have to do more research in order to find more investment opportunities. The sooner the snowball grows, the faster it will be running down..

Happy Easter all!

Thanks for reading.

New investment oppertunity

Looking at my watch list there are currently 12 stocks trading close to their 52-week low figure. This month, I'm trying to add a stock in the Industry sector, as I do not own any stock in this sector yet.

There are a few possibilities I'd like to discuss with you!

3M Company (MMM)

3M is a huge manufacturer of a wide range of industrial products. From Post-Its to petcare, this company owns a large number of well known brands. They have been raising their dividends for 57 years in a row! That sure sounds like music to my ears.

The only disadvantage: it currently trades close to their 52-week high value.

Illenois Tool Works (ITW)

ITW is another global manufacturer of industrial products. They operate in segments like Automotive, Food Equipment & Construction Products. The company has been raising their dividends for 40 years in a row. Not too shabby!

Deere & company (DE)

Founded in 1837, this company sure knows how to design and manufacture farm equipment. It is the largest agriculture machinery company in the world. Although they announced to lay off 600 of their employees in the US due to less demand of their products, I'm pretty confident they will find other ways in upcoming markets to increase their revenue.

They have been raising their dividends for 11 years in a row.

Textainer Group Holdings Inc (TGH)

Textainer is a freight company managing containers. They sell, manage and lease containers to various shipping lines. With over 2 million containers in their fleet, this is one of the largest companies at their segment.

During Q3 and Q4 in 2014 the stock went down from $40 to $28. As it is currently trading at $29, this should provide a very nice entry point.

They have been raiding their dividends for 8 years in a row.

General Electric (GE)

General Electric is a diversified technology and financial services company. It serves customers in more than 100 countries. Their products and services range from power generation, water processing to medical imaging. The company has shown a steady growth over the last few years, but their 5 year growth number is very low. Despite the short 5 year streak of dividend raising, they have been paying dividends for 40 years now.

This is another stock that's trading close to its 52-week low number.

Stock stats

All of these companies look like solid investments to me, but when we compare some growth and yield stats, there are huge differences.

I'm definitely looking for double digit growth numbers, so ITW will not be the winner here.
Do you have any thoughts?

Thanks for reading.

Dividend raise - T

I'm very excited to announce my very first dividend raise!

AT&T raised their dividend from $0.46 to $0.47.
This is a 2.1% raise. Sadly but true, this is more than my paycheck raised back in January..

It is also twice as much as my bank offers me in interest. Dissatisfaction about this low interest was one of the main reasons to start this journey, so I'm very happy about this raise.

At the 2nd of February AT&T paid me a total of $22.56 for my 48 stocks.

These raises are the power of DGI, so I'm very excited to plan my next investment, in order to receive many more raises in the future.

Did you have any recent raises?

Thanks for reading!

Recent sell - TICC

Back in July I did a small investing experiment.
Despite all the alarms around this company, I bought a few stocks of a company called TICC.
Main reason for this was: I had not enough capital left to buy a blue chip stock, but the 12% dividend also looked very attractive.

This extremely high yield obviously has its reasons. The stock has been declining ever since I bought it.

Bought it at $9.80 and I sold half a year later for $7.44.
Total dividend paid: $1.16. Net result: -$1.20.

Lessons learned: don't invest in companies with extremely high dividend yield. Not even when they have more than 10 years of dividend paying history.

Despite the loss, this lesson seems to be much more valuable than this single dollar.

Have you had any risky operations going?

Thanks for reading!