We are halfway through 2022, and I don’t mind saying that I perhaps wish the year was already over.

You see, the first half of the year was like a gut punch to my Portfolio value.  News reports state that it was the worst first half to a year in the stock market in over 5 decades.

The only saving grace was that from a dividend perspective, things were steady as she goes.

There have been no dividend cuts to speak of in my Portfolio in 2022, and instead the dividend raises have come in as expected.  My forward dividend income continued to grow despite all the market turmoil.

This provides comfort in the knowledge that in all but the most extreme cases, once I’m living off the dividend income from my Portfolio, I should be able to reliably expect that the income stream will be largely unaffected by market events.

So, what happened to my Portfolio in June, when the stock market headed down with vigor?

Well, while I didn’t notch record dividend income, I posted my 2nd best monthly total ever… surpassing $1.6K.  Stay tuned for the final number.

With stock prices down, reinvesting my dividends in June led to a terrific month with regard to boosting my forward dividend income.  I can’t wait to share those numbers.

What about Year-over-Year (YoY) dividend income growth?  I’ll share that percentage as well.  Let me just say for now that it was on par with my monthly target.

Dividend raises were, as expected, a bit light compared to previous months this year, both in quantity and in the boost it provided to my forward dividend income.  I’ve got the details coming up shortly.

I wouldn’t say my Portfolio transaction activity was out of the ordinary in June, but whatever I did, it led to my best month thus far in 2022 in terms of increasing my forward dividend income.  Specifics are forthcoming.

After adding up all my forward dividend income in June from my trifecta of income sources, I noted good progress again – another triple-digit month!  What was interesting is that my normal leading category took a little break in June and let the other sources shine.  We’ll examine these differences in the paragraphs ahead.

As usual, I’ll provide updates to my Progress Charts, too.  Visuals for both my monthly and annual dividend numbers provide a different way to examine all the numbers.

Let’s kick off my monthly dividend income report, starting with my dividend income in June.

 

Dividend Income

 

It was my 2nd best total ever as I collected a sweet $1,623.63 in dividends.  YoY growth was a solid 14.9%, the result of exceeding the $1,413.05 I collected in June of 2021.  I just barely fell shy of my 15% monthly YoY growth target.

A total of 23 companies paid me a dividend in June.  The best part was that a stellar 8 companies delivered a triple-digit dividend.  This group of 8 stocks are some of my Portfolio favorites.

Qualcomm (QCOM) led my dividend payers by providing a juicy $153.21 dividend… eking out the $151.28 dividend provided by T. Rowe Price Group (TROW).

My smallest dividend was a $6.50 payment from NextEra Energy (NEE).  This was just slightly ahead of the $6.92 dividend delivered by Microsoft (MSFT).  I’d like to see both of these stocks become larger parts of my Portfolio, thus providing a larger dividend.  However, both stocks are notoriously richly valued nearly all the time.  Thus, I’ll try to remain patient and add when I see the value is there.

The increased dividend amounts from TROW, Skyworks Solutions (SWKS), Amgen (AMGN), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Visa (V) and Pinnacle West Capital (PNW) were each helped by one or more additional purchases over the past year.  Apparently I’ve been busy purchasing stocks with quarter-ending dividend payments.

The QCOM increase came despite a small share trim over the past year.

The boost to my Main Street Capital (MAIN) dividend was supported by a special dividend that MAIN delivered in addition to its regular dividend.

Increased YoY amounts for all other companies were a result of dividend increases and reinvested dividends over the past year.  I added over $25 in YoY dividend gains from Aflac (AFL), over $21 each from BlackRock (BLK) and Union Pacific (UNP), and nearly $20 from Broadcom (AVGO).  Let’s not forget about the nearly $12 from Pepsico (PEP) and over $9 from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ).  YoY gains were widespread in my Portfolio.

Sadly, I did have a few stocks with payout reductions compared to the same month a year ago.  This was the case for Gilead Sciences (GILD) and 3M Co. (MMM).  I trimmed both due to middling- to-disappointing performance and less than desirable dividend growth.

My Portfolio did welcome 1 new dividend payer in June.  Cummins (CMI) debuted with a $14.50 dividend after I initiated a position back in April.

There were no stocks that no longer paid a dividend for my Portfolio this June.  This surely made it easier this month to achieve the target YoY growth I desire.

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 an outstanding $52.12.  This easily surpassed my monthly $30 target.  TROW was the primary contributor after falling steeply in price this year, allowing me to purchase more shares with the dividend.  However, AVGO was a significant contributor, too, along with 6 other stocks that also boosted my forward dividend income by over $3 each due to the reinvested dividends.

As a result of June’s reinvested dividends, I purchased close to 14 new shares of stock.  This included over 2 shares of AFL, and over 1 share each of QCOM, TROW, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), GILD and MAIN.  My Portfolio stocks were DRiPping nicely in June.

 

Dividend Raises

June was light on dividend raises for my Portfolio… only 3.  However, one was a double-digit boost and you know I like that.

The raises were from Portfolio stocks that were only average in dividend weighting, thus the impact of the raise wasn’t too great.

My first raise in June was my best.  It was a 13.79% increase from UnitedHealth Group (UNH).  While this fell short of the 16% raise from last year, UNH has been a strong dividend growth stock for my Portfolio ever since I added it to my Portfolio back in August 2019.

Caterpillar (CAT) announced a dividend raise on the same day as UNH.  The increase from CAT was a smaller 8.11%, but this solid boost is on par with what I desire from most of my holdings.  In addition, it was tick up from the 7.77% that CAT delivered last year.  Hard to knock that!

Lastly, I received the small, quarterly raise from Realty Income (O).  It was the typical 0.21% boost that’s been commonplace over the past several quarters.  We might expect the large O dividend increase to come in September.

I thought there was an outside chance I might get a raise announcement from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) in June, after the 2022 Federal Reserve Stress Test, but that didn’t come to fruition.  Given that JPM announced their last dividend increase in September, we probably need to wait another quarter for a possible JPM raise announcement.

 

 

Adding up the three dividend raises from June, my forward dividend income increased by $33.45.  This was my smallest monthly boost due to raises thus far in 2022.

However, this was a small improvement from the $31.95 received from last June, so I like that.

I’d have to invest $1,181.98 at my Portfolio’s yield of 2.83% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.

Looking ahead to July, it’ll probably be more of the same with no significant boost to my forward dividend income from raises.  I’m expecting 4 raises.  Two should be raises from WBA and SWKS,  The other two should be my first dividend raises from fairly new holdings: National Retail Properties (NNN) and CMI.

If I had to guess, WBA and NNN will deliver raises south of 5%.  SWKS and CMI should deliver raises in the mid-to-upper single digits, or hopefully better.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

My collection of Portfolio transactions from June involved 4 different stocks.  However, there were 6 total transactions.

Also, I established a position in one new stock, Medtronic (MDT).  It was MDT that I purchased on three different occasions in June, which drove up my transaction count.

The 6 total transactions were comprised of 5 purchases and 1 sale.  The sale was a trim of Gentex (GNTX).  No dividend growth from GNTX over the past two years was a motivating factor.

One of my purchases added shares of Omnicom Group (OMC).  The stock’s share price dipped back to the level of my previous buys, so I decided to add a little more.  In the days that followed, OMC proceeded to get even less expensive, making my purchase a little premature.

Lastly, I continued adding to JPM as its share price declined further in 2022.  The dip below $113 was enough to get me to act and purchase more shares in my quest to reach 100 shares for the stock.

Purchase details for all these transactions can be found in the following pair of posts…

 

Recent Transactions – MDT, GNTX, OMC

Recent Buy – JPM

 

The 6 total transactions resulted in a net capital investment of $1,735.85.

My forward dividend income increased by $75.20 as a result.  This was my best monthly total from new capital investment in 2022, eclipsing the previous best that I established just last month.

With the new Portfolio addition of MDT, the number of stocks in my Portfolio rose to 58.

 

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.  After tallying June’s totals, I’m just slightly ahead of last year’s pace when it comes to adding forward dividend income.

 

 

My additional forward dividend income totaled $160.77 for June.  While this was not as good as last month ($213.29), it was well ahead of last year’s total ($101.36).

In June, I witnessed my worst contribution from Dividend Raises for the year ($33.45).  I can’t expect Dividend Raises to set the pace every month, can I?

This disappointment was offset by my best month of the year for both Reinvested Dividends ($52.12) and Investment of Capital ($75.20).

So, one could say there was good teamwork from my three sources in June.  While my strongest source was weak in June, any slack was picked up by the other two sources.

Best of all, compared to last year, my June total of additional forward dividend income increased by over $59, with all 3 sources providing better numbers than they did in June, 2021.

Halfway through the year, I’m off the annual pace I set in 2021 for additional forward dividend income.  However, I have crossed the $1K mark so far ($1,042.52), so I’m optimistic that a worst case scenario will still have me finish the year adding at least $2K.

At midyear, Dividend Raises and Reinvested Dividends are posting great numbers in 2022 compared to 2021.  It’s my Investment of Capital source that’s lagging.  While I’ve invested about 2/3 of the total I planned for 2022, I invested a good chunk of that capital in an effort to recoup lost dividend income from some higher yielding stocks that I trimmed or purged from my Portfolio.  Here’s hoping I can get away from that in the second half of 2022.

 

Progress Charts

The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.  My YoY dividend growth streak is still intact after June (78 months!), but it appears that it will come to an end next month, as I’ll have a hard time overcoming that special dividend from TROW last year.

 

 

 

On an annual basis, here’s what the dividend totals look like.  Almost $7.5K at the halfway mark.  This bodes well for topping $15K for the year.  Let’s go!

 

 

Summary

Dividends exceeded $1.6K in June, settling at $1,623.63.  YoY growth was just about on par with my 15% target, as it finished at 14.9%.

Reinvested dividends resulted in over $52 of additional forward dividend income.  This blew away my $30 monthly target and was helped by declining stock prices during the month.

June brought me only 3 dividend raises, but at least it was one more raise than I saw in both April and May.  One raise was of the double-digit variety, however, this didn’t prevent me from posting my worst month of the year with respect to forward dividend income due to dividend raises… just over $33.

I had 6 Portfolio transactions in June – 5 purchases and 1 sale involving 4 different stocks.  I trimmed GNTX, but added to OMC & JPM.  In addition, I initiated a position in MDT, then added to it a couple of times after that.  My net cash investment was nearly $1,736, which boosted my additional forward dividend income more than $75.  This was my biggest monthly total due to new capital investment thus far in 2022.

Tallying the contributions from all sources, I added close to $161 in additional forward dividend income for my Portfolio in June.  While this wasn’t as good as last month, it was well ahead of the total I posted last June.

My Portfolio’s annual forward dividend income total finished the month at $15,304.43.  I should top $16K by year’s end, but I hope my final amount will exceed $16.5K.  Stretch goal!

 

Quarter-ending months are usually plentiful for dividends.  Did you achieve any records with regard to dividend income in your portfolio?  Please share in the Comments!

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