Another month down!  We are now 1/3 of the way through 2023.  The dividend income continues to pile up… expected to reach a record total by year’s end.

Unlike last month, April didn’t provide record monthly dividends to revel in, but it was another brick in the dividend wall.  The Portfolio income continues to rise… hopefully to a level that fully supports me in retirement.

That’s a ways off still, so I’m keeping my foot on the accelerator,  continuing with the new capital investment, and reinvesting the current dividends.  Those dividend raises along the way only help me get there faster.

Here’s a quick preview of my dividend income post this month…

April is often my worst month of the year for dividend income… and it’s possible that will end up being the case again in 2023.  However, I can tell you I at least topped $1.2K in dividends again this month (which has been an unpublished goal of mine).

My Year-over-Year (YoY) growth target of 15% was also exceeded… by a healthy amount, too!  Keep reading to see by how much.

My reinvested dividends resulted in topping my $35 monthly target for additional forward dividend income from reinvested dividends.  This was despite me choosing not to reinvest the dividends of my one my stocks.  Stick around to find out how much new income I have, which stock didn’t have its dividend reinvested, and why.

Additional forward dividend income from dividend raises wasn’t large, just acceptable.  I did get one more raise than I was expecting though.  I’ll soon let you know which company provided an early raise announcement and the additional forward dividend income total from all raises.

Purchases were minimal in April, so the additional forward dividend income generated from this was correspondingly low… my lowest monthly total for 2023 so far.  I’ll let you know shortly what I bought and the forward income it produced.

Once again, the forward dividend income contributions from all 3 of my sources (reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and investment of capital) did result in a triple-digit total.  $100+ is the minimum I wish to see each month.  There were no contributors that carried the month.  It was just solid contributions from all categories.  You’ll know where the total ended up by the end of this post.

Don’t forget, I’ll be sharing my monthly and annual dividend income progress chart updates, too.  Sometimes a visual representation of the progress makes the numbers easier to digest.

Here we go.  Let’s get into the details of this month’s dividend income report, beginning with my dividend income…

 

Dividend Income

 

Certainly no records were set in April, but it was a good month.  My Portfolio collected monthly dividend income of $1,217.51, which exceeded the $1,012.29 posted in April of last year.

YoY dividend growth came in at 20.27%, blowing away my 15% monthly target.  This was the 2nd time I bested 20% YoY growth in 2023, but it didn’t quite match the 21.85% from February.  Still, 20%+ YoY growth is the kind of tremendous dividend growth that will have me reach financial independence much faster than anticipated.

A total of 23 companies paid me a dividend in April.  That’s a nice total… it approaches the number of dividend payers I have in quarter-ending months.  Ten companies managed to deliver a dividend north of $50, with a pair of them even topping $100.  I love seeing that.  Just like last month, all dividends were $10 or more.

My largest April dividend was paid by Altria Group (MO).  It came up just shy of $130, at $129.56.  My other triple-digit dividend totaled $106.71 and was delivered by RPM International (RPM).

On the opposite end of the payment spectrum was McCormick & Co. (MKC), which sent me $11.79 for its dividend.  MKC has surged in price over the past month, so it doesn’t look like I’ll being purchasing any more shares in the near-term, probably keeping MKC near the bottom of my dividend payer list.

The increased dividend amounts from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Omnicom Group (OMC), Comcast (CMCSA), Medical Properties Trust (MPW) & VICI Properties (VICI) were each helped by one or more purchases over the past year.

Increased YoY amounts for all other companies were a result of dividend increases and reinvested dividends over the past year.  I added over $14 in YoY dividend gains from MO, in excess of $12 from Automatic Data Processing (ADP), more than $7 from Merck & Co. (MRK) and Illinois Tool Works (ITW), north of $6 from RPM, and topped $5 from Nike (NKE).

Of the stocks that that paid me both last year and this year, none showed a payout reduction.  This means no dividend cuts from the companies, and no stock trims by me.

There were 5 new dividend payers in April.  A couple of these paid a large enough dividend to be excluded from the group at the bottom of the payers list.  These larger new dividends included $46.50 from Best Buy (BBY), and $37.99 from Medtronic (MDT).  The other three new dividends, showing up at the bottom of the dividend payment list, came from FedEx (FDX), American Tower (AMT) and MKC, which paid dividends of $16.21, $15.60 and $11.79, respectively.

As for stocks no longer paying me a dividend in April, there were a couple of them.  I no longer collect a dividend from Gentex (GNTX), which I sold for lack of dividend growth, and STORE Capital (STOR), which went away after being bought and taken private.  Between the pair of them, I had to overcome a loss of $60.52 in dividend income compared to last year.

This April, not all my dividends got automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them.  There were two stocks that didn’t have their dividends reinvested.  The first was Amdocs Ltd. (DOX), which my broker doesn’t offer dividend reinvestment for… no change here.  However, I could have reinvested the dividends from MPW, but I chose not to.  MPW has struggled mightily over the past year, its stock price has plummeted, and their dividend is in danger of being cut unless conditions improve.  Rather than reinvest the dividends and expose myself to an even larger problem should a dividend cut arrive, I just pocketed the dividend and added it to my cash balance that I’ll use to purchase future Portfolio stocks.  Should MPW experience a recovery and the dividend safety get better, I’ll consider turning on the DRiP again.

The additional forward dividend income boost that resulted from the dividend reinvestments I did make was $41.76.  This surpassed the $35 monthly target I have, despite the two non-reinvested dividends.  So, it was a good month.  MO did most of the heavy lifting here, as it provided over $10 in additional forward dividend income.  Another 7 companies added over $2 each, and yet another 8 companies added over $1 each.

Thanks to April’s reinvested dividends, I purchased nearly 16 new shares of stock.  This included over 2 shares of MO, and over 1 share each from RPM, CMCSA, Cisco Systems (CSCO), OGE Energy (OGE) & VICI.

 

Dividend Raises

After four dividend raises last month, the number dwindled even further in April… only 3.  However, this ended up being one more than I expected.

Of the 3 raises, I’d say one was quite good, one was average, and the other was a tad disappointing.  None of the raises managed to reach 10%.

Unfortunately, my two worst raise percentages came from my two largest dividend payers this month.  So, additional forward dividend income didn’t pop like I always hope.

My first raise announcement of the month came from FedEx (FDX).  This was a surprise announcement, as I wasn’t expecting to hear from FDX until June – at least that’s been their historical pattern.  FDX delivered my best raise of the month in percentage terms, at 9.57%.  I’ll take that without question.  Sadly, since FDX is one of my smaller positions, the impact of the raise wasn’t too significant, adding only $6.23 to my forward dividend income.

The next raise was delivered by Procter & Gamble (PG).  It was a 3% boost, adding $15.19 in forward dividend income.  I expected PG to post a 4%-6% hike, so coming in at 3% was underwhelming, especially when you consider it was a step down from last year’s 5%.

My final raise of April was a 5.31% raise from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ).  This raise was right in my expected range.  It was no surprise, as JNJ is very consistent with its dividend growth, delivering raises in the range of 5%-7% in 11 of the previous 12 years.  This raise led to my biggest forward dividend income boost of the month, $24.44.

 

 

Adding up the dividend raises from April, my forward dividend income increased by $45.86.  This was a decrease compared to the same month last year ($50.72), as well as from last month ($61.11).

I’d have to invest $1,626.24 at my Portfolio’s current yield of 2.82% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.

Looking ahead to May, I’m hoping to hear dividend raise announcements from at least 2 companies, possibly up to 5.  The two raises I expect are from Lowe’s Companies (LOW) and Medtronic (MDT).  The ones I’m less certain of are from Union Pacific (UNP), Main Street Capital (MAIN) and least of all American Tower (AMT).  I’ve already heard about a raise from one of these companies, but I’ll save that for next month’s post.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

Portfolio transactions continued to be limited.  Just like last month, I made only two transactions in April, both were buys.

Both buys were of existing positions.  Neither is an extremely small position, but the stocks are both ones that I like and want to make larger within my Portfolio.

Details for both of the purchases can be found in the following post…

 

Recent Buys – ADP & MDT

 

The two buys resulted in an investment of $823.50 into my Portfolio.  Meanwhile, my forward dividend income increased by a total of $23.60.

With both stocks being existing holdings, the number of stocks in my Portfolio remained at 60.

 

Tallying Up The Additional Forward Dividend Income

In 2023, 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 2022 totals as well, so that we can compare as the year progresses.

The contributions from all three sources were again fairly even for the month.  Albeit all of the sources failed to eclipse their individual totals from March.

 

 

I tallied $111.22 of additional forward dividend income when accounting for all the sources.  This was slightly better than in April of last year, but almost $50 worse than the total in March.  I was happy to once again see the total get into triple-digit territory.

I’m ahead of last year’s pace for additional forward dividend income (adding $779.66 this year compared to $668.46 from last year), despite seeing less from Dividend Raises in 2023.  Reinvested Dividends and Investment of Capital have made up difference, and then some.

 

Progress Charts

The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.

Having exceeded $1,200 in dividends in April makes it a good bet that I’ll exceed $1,200 every month in 2023.  That’s a good baseline dividend amount that I plan to keep improving on.

 

 

 

On an annual basis, here’s what the dividend totals look like.

The $5,533.93 that I’ve collected in 4 months of 2023 is more than the entire amount I collected in 2016.  Wow!

 

 

Summary

More great income progress was achieved in April.  I collected more than $1,217 in dividends from 23 total payments.  The YoY gain exceeded 20.2%, easily a stellar number.

MO provided my largest dividend in April, almost $130.  But there were plenty of other solid contributions, as 18 of the 23 payments topped $36.

Although I didn’t reinvest all my dividends this month, those that I did generated almost $42 of additional forward dividend income.  Close to 16 shares were dripped, too.

I gained a bit under $46 of additional forward dividend income from 3 dividend raises.  The best percentage raise was a 9.57% hike from FDX, but the lower percentage raises from PG and JNJ added more forward income thanks to my larger positions in those stocks.

With only two transactions in my Portfolio in April, both buys, additional forward dividend income from capital investments was limited, too.  I managed to secure better than $23 from the buys of ADP and MDT.  I invested a little over $823.

Tallying the contributions from all sources, I exceeded $111 in additional forward dividend income for April.  I was happy to post another triple-digit month in that regard.

As for my Portfolio’s annual forward dividend income, I finished the month with a total of $17,245.19 (or an average of $1,437.10/month).

 

How did your Portfolio fare in April?  Were dividends plentiful?  Did dividend raises exceed your expectations?  Please share in the Comments!

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