While my Portfolio returns have been a little lackluster to start 2022, I can’t say the same about my dividends… those are outstanding as ever.

The consistency and predictability of dividends is amazing.  To know that I can depend on those payments (in most cases!) regardless of what’s going on in the stock market is comforting.

Prior to each month I usually estimate the dividend total I can expect to receive.  Unless there’s a change in a company’s payment schedule I can predict my dividend income down to the pennies.  It’s a beautiful thing.

As usual, I’m excited to share my monthly dividend results with the readers.  Here’s a preview of what’s to come in February’s report…

It was another $1K+ in dividends… but by how much did I clear that threshold?  And did I best last month’s total?  You’ll know in a few moments.

I can tell you YoY growth was stellar again.  I blew past my 15% target.  How high did the number get?  Let me just say it was my best month in a long time.

While I couldn’t top the additional forward dividend income due to dividend raises that I posted in January, I still had a nice February.  This was possible due to a record number of dividend raises for a single month.  I’ll soon share the total number of raises and the future income they provided, so stayed tuned.

There wasn’t much in the way of new capital investment for me in February.  However, I did make one purchase, and it was in my most underweight sector.  So, I was happy to succeed in targeting that sector with my lone purchase and work on my annual goal of improving my weighting there.

Of course, I’ll cover my additional forward dividend income from all my sources and compare the total to last year.  I’ll also provide an update to my progress charts.

Another month is in the books… let’s kick off the report by examining my February dividend income.

 

Dividend Income

 

In February, I collected a healthy $1,021.69 in dividends.  Another month of 4-digit dividend income!  This total was a bit shy of what I raked in last month, but still exceeded that $1K mark, so I’m obviously happy about that.

YoY growth in February was superb at 28.55%.  I jumped from $794.76 in dividends last February to over $1K this year.  This blew past my my 15% monthly target and it bested the 21.2% YoY growth I posted in January.  I can’t ask for much more here.  I can’t recall the last time I recorded such a large YoY growth number.

A total of 17 companies paid me a dividend in February, including two that topped $100, and another seven that topped $50.  None of the payments were less than $20.  Love it!

AbbVie (ABBV) easily led my dividend payers with a monster $185.19 dividend.  I also received a 3-digit dividend payment from Procter & Gamble (PG) at $116.93.  Nexstar Media Group (NXST) isn’t too far away from joining the 3-digit payment club.

My smallest dividend payment came from Realty Income (O) at $20.16.  However, since this is a monthly payment it’s harder for O to avoid being at the bottom of the list.  I view the O dividend as more of a $60 quarterly dividend.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have any increased dividend amounts in February that were helped by additional purchases over the past year.  I guess I haven’t been giving too much to love to my Feb/May/Aug/Nov dividend payers!

Thus, increased YoY amounts for all companies were a result of dividend increases and reinvested dividends over the past year.  I added over $22 in YoY dividend gains from both ABBV and NXST, over $20 from Lowe’s Companies (LOW), and north of $13 from PG.

Only one stock recorded a payout reduction compared to last February, and that was Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI).  I’ve been trimming my position in OHI over the past year due to their poor dividend safety.

Three new dividend payers appeared in my Portfolio this February.  The first is Starbucks (SBUX).  However, SBUX is not new to my Portfolio.  It just appears to be new due a shift in their payment relative to last year.  SBUX paid their normal February dividend in March last year and returned to normal this year.  New payments from Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and National Retail Properties (NNN) are actually due to the stock being added to my Portfolio over the past year.  BMY debuted highest up the list with a dividend of $48.49, while NNN came through with a dividend of $22.97.  I’m always happy to welcome new dividend payers to my Portfolio.

Happily, there were zero stocks that no longer paid a dividend relative to last February.  That always gives me a good chance to have a strong YoY growth number like I had this month.

As usual, all my dividends got automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them.  The additional forward dividend income boost that resulted from the reinvestment was $29.79.  I was hoping to eclipse $30 in additional forward dividend income from reinvested dividends each month this year, but that’s not a possibility now.  Still, I came quite close in February and I think I can crack $30 in each of the remaining months in 2022.

As a result of February’s reinvested dividends, I purchased over 9 new shares of stock.  This included over 1 share of ABBV and fractional shares of all my other February dividend payers.

 

Dividend Raises

I was expecting a record number of dividend raises during the month of February and that’s exactly what I got.

The most dividend raises I’d received in a single month was 8.  However, in February I notched a record 10 dividend raises, establishing a new mark.

Unfortunately, most of the raises came from stocks that are smaller positions for me.  In addition, the raise percentages were a bit smaller than I was hoping for.  Thus, I couldn’t surpass the additional forward dividend income boost that I got from just 4 stocks in January.

Still, it was a good month.  I posted a triple-digit month with regard to additional forward dividend income due to dividend raises.  Let’s see how I got there.

I received a couple of dividend raises on the 1st day of the month from Gilead Sciences (GILD) and Amdocs Ltd. (DOX).

The one from Gilead was a 2.82% raise that failed to match the 4.41% raise from last year.  The dividend raises from GILD have been trending down over the years.  Couple that with poor stock performance and GILD may not be long for my Portfolio.

As for DOX, I bought the stock in hopes of receiving double-digit dividend growth.  My first raise from the company came in at 9.72%.  This came up just short of the 10% level, but I will never complain about being so close.  This turned out to be one of my better raise percentages during the month.

Two more companies announced a dividend raise on the 3rd of the month.  These were companies that I thought might announce a raise in January, but to no avail.

Quest Diagnostics (DGX) came in with an increase of 6.45%, which was a bit of let down compared to the 10.71% boost from last year.  However, DGX usually provides raises in the upper single-digits, so this wasn’t too far out of the ordinary.

The second raise announced that day was an 8% raise from Air Products & Chemicals (APD).  This fell short of the 11.94% increase the company announced last year and was less than their 10-year average, which is just above 10%.  Still, APD provided my first double-digit income boost of the month as my forward dividend income increased by $16.12 as a result of this raise.

My first double-digit raise of the month came from T. Rowe Price Group (TROW), which announced a dividend raise of 11.11%.  Nice!  Even better, since TROW is a large position for me, this raise jacked up my forward dividend income by a hefty $58.62.  Unfortunately, this raise percentage was yet another slowdown relative to the prior year.  In 2021, TROW raised by 20%, so this was nearly half that percentage, and it was even shy of the company’s 10-year dividend growth rate of 13.29%.

The worst dividend raise of the month came from 3M Co. (MMM).  Just like last year, MMM delivered a sub-1% raise, at 0.68%.  MMM is dealing with multiple legal issues at this time which puts a burden on its financials.  I might not hang around to see what MMM provides for a dividend raise next year.

Thankfully, my next dividend raise exceeded my expectations a bit.  Pepsico (PEP) announced a 6.98% dividend raise.  This was better than the 5.13% boost from last year.  Yeah! …a raise that was better than last year… I’ll take it.  Since PEP is one of my larger holdings, this raise resulted in a forward dividend income increase of $33.78.

My next raise came from another company that has been disappointing me with their dividend growth.  That would be Cisco Systems (CSCO).  CSCO only managed a 2.70% raise this year, in line with the 2.78% boost from last year.  The difference for me with CSCO compared to MMM is that CSCO has actually done well with regard to stock price performance, thus I’m inclined to stick around and see if CSCO can improve on future raises.

Medical Properties Trust (MPW) is new to my Portfolio and delivered its first raise for me in February.  The increase was 3.57%, which is around the level I expected for this high-yielding REIT.

My last raise of February came from NextEra Energy (NEE).  NEE once again came through with a double-digit dividend boost by raising 10.39%.  This topped the 10% raise provided in 2021.  Sadly, my NEE position is so small that the impact of this double-digit raise on my Portfolio is small.  Assuming NEE can continue with such solid annual raises, I’ll be on the lookout for an opportunity to increase my NEE position size.

 

 

Adding up all the dividend raises from February, my forward dividend income increased by $144.48.  Not too shabby, but I felt like it could have been better given the record number of raises.

The amount was only $3.80 better than the total from last February, despite having four more dividend raises this year.

Nonetheless, I’d have to invest $5,849.39 at my Portfolio’s current average yield of 2.47% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.

Looking ahead to March, dividend raises are going to cool down compared to the past 6 months.  Next month starts the typical 6-month dividend raise slow down for me (March through August), so expect me to post some smaller monthly income boosts from dividend raises over this coming time period.

In March, I’ve got expectations for three dividend raises, and possibly a fourth.  I expect to hear raise announcements from General Dynamics (GD), Qualcomm (QCOM) and get the small quarterly boost from Realty Income (O).  I also hope to hear about a raise from Gentex (GNTX) after a dividend freeze last year.  Update – two of these companies have already made announcements in the first week of March, but I’ll save the details for next month’s report.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

I made only a single purchase during the month of February.  That was the extent of my Portfolio transactions.

In recent months, I’ve noted that the price on Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) had come down to attractive levels for me.  Throw in the fact that SWKS exists in my most underweight sector of Information Technology and I couldn’t resist adding some shares to start rectifying that situation.

All the details for this transaction can be found in the following post…

 

Recent Buy – SWKS

 

The transaction resulted in a capital investment of $683.75.  Due to the sub-2% dividend yield for SWKS, my forward dividend income only increased by $11.20.

Since SWKS is an existing holding, the number of stocks in my Portfolio remained at 55.

 

Tallying Up The Additional Forward Dividend Income

In 2022, I continue tracking my additional forward dividend income generated each month from the trifecta of sources: reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and new capital investment.

I show 2021 totals as well, so that we can compare as the year progresses.  With dividend raise percentages so far coming in lower this year compared to 2021, I suspect I may have a hard time beating the forward income boost from 2021, but I’ll try.

 

 

My additional forward dividend income for February totaled $185.47.  This was actually a bit better than the $182.35 that I posted last year.  The numbers in each of the 3 categories was strangely similar year-over-year.

Dividend Raises provided the majority of my monthly total, coming in at $144.48, and for the 2nd month in a row easily outpaced any contributions from the other two categories.  The majority of the $144.48 in raises was provided by TROW, PEP and APD.

Reinvested Dividends fell shy of my $30 target, but only by cents.  What was good though, was there was nice YoY improvement in the total.  Declining stock prices so far this year will only support bigger numbers in this category moving forward.

There was not much of a contribution from Investment of Capital again as my purchase activity thus far in 2022 has been limited.  Could March be the month that Investment of Capital becomes a significant contributor?

 

Progress Charts

The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.  Both months to start 2022 have topped $1K in dividend income.  Can crossing this threshold each month persist throughout the entire year?

 

 

 

On an annual basis, here’s what the dividend totals look like.  After next month, I will have collected substantially more in dividends for 2022 than I collected in all of 2015.  Wow!

 

 

Summary

It was another $1,021 in dividends received in February.  YoY growth was an outrageous at 28.5%.  2022 is off to a good start after back-to-back tone-setting months.

Reinvesting my dividends resulted in nearly $30 of additional forward dividend income.

A record 10 dividend raises were mine in February.  Only 3 of the 10 raises topped 10%, but 6 of the 10 were above 6.4%.  These raises added over $144 to my forward dividend income.

February Portfolio activity amounted to only a single purchase.  I added to an existing Information Technology name in SWKS.  My total cash investment was just about $684.  This increased my forward dividend income by over $11.

Tallying the contributions from all sources, I recorded more than $185 in additional forward dividend income for my Portfolio in February.  My Portfolio’s annual forward dividend income total finished at $14,699.89.

 

Did you have lots of dividend raises in February as well?  Are you off to a good start in 2022 after taking stock of your Portfolio 2 months in?  Please share in the Comments!

I have updated the Portfolio & Dividends pages in conjunction with this monthly update.