After a decent first half of 2023 for my Portfolio, I’m ready to kick off the second half. I anticipate investing a good chunk of money and reinvesting my dividends, but mostly I’m hoping for dividend raise percentages to pick up again.
I should say I’m looking for my Portfolio to perform a little better in the second half of the year as well. I saw noticeable under-performance from my Portfolio relative to the S&P 500 in the first half… mainly because my Portfolio doesn’t hold much in big cap tech.
In any case, there’s room to improve so let’s hope those better Portfolio results come to fruition.
Here’s a quick preview of this month’s dividend income post before we get into the details…
Monthly dividend income eclipsed the $1.2K level I’m targeting in 2023, but not my much. You’ll know the final number soon.
On the bright side, I surpassed my monthly Year-over-Year (YoY) dividend growth target of 15%. The finishing percentage was solidly above the threshold.
Additional forward dividend income from reinvested dividends exceeded my $35 monthly target once again. Actually, I topped $40. Reinvested dividends have been providing good chunks of additional forward dividend income all year long and I expect that to continue through the end of the year.
Dividend raises have been under par all year long and results in July did nothing to change that. Not only did I have my fewest number of dividend raises for a month this year, but the forward dividend income from those raises only exceeded that from February, when I had the V.F. Corp (VFC) dividend cut.
With the stock market on the upswing the past couple of months, I haven’t been too eager to invest. Thus, capital investment was fairly light in July. However, I did manage to make a couple of purchases of existing Portfolio stocks. This added some additional forward dividend income for the Portfolio, but nothing eye-popping.
Sadly, the forward dividend income contributions from all 3 of my sources (reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and investment of capital) was at my lowest level of 2023 in July. I failed to reach the monthly triple-digit total I seek for the second time this year.
Regardless of the results, I’ve updated my monthly and annual dividend income progress charts to include this month’s income. The updates will be shared shortly.
Wait no longer… here come the details for this month’s dividend income report, beginning with my dividend income…
Dividend Income
For July, I collected $1,240.37 of monthly dividend income. This was slightly better than my lowest total of the year, which was $1,217.51 this past April.
YoY dividend growth finished at 18.09% though, which is a nice percentage. It solidly surpassed my 15% monthly target, even though it was my third lowest percentage of 2023.
A total of 23 companies paid me a dividend in July. Only 2 of those companies delivered a triple-digit dividend. There are a few companies coming up on the $100 dividend level though.
My largest July dividend was delivered by Altria Group (MO). The company paid me $132.12. The $107.26 from RPM International (RPM) was a fairly distant 2nd place.
McCormick & Co. (MKC) provided my smallest dividend at $11.85. This is noticeably smaller than the $17.40 from Amdocs Ltd. (DOX) and the $17.85 from FedEx (FDX). I’d like to see my MKC dividend grow to at least $25 per quarter, or $100 annually, so I’ve got some buying to do.
The increased dividend amounts from Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Comcast (CMCSA), Medical Properties Trust (MPW), Medtronic (MDT) & 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 more than $15 in YoY dividend gains from MO, north of $7 from RPM, Merck & Co. (MRK) and Illinois Tool Works (ITW), and better than $5 from Nike (NKE) and Main Street Capital (MAIN).
Of the stocks that paid me both last year and this year, none showed a payout reduction, which is terrific to see. Usually this happens due to me trimming my positions.
There were four new dividend payers for July. The biggest debut came from Best Buy (BBY) with a $47.08 dividend. American Tower (AMT), FDX and MKC also showed up, but each paid to a lesser degree… less than $19 each.
Two stocks no longer paid me a dividend this July. I now miss out on dividends from Gentex (GNTX), and STORE Capital (STOR) no longer pays them. I sold GNTX due to no dividend growth and deteriorating performance. In the case of STOR, the company was taken private.
As is typically the case, all my dividends got automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them. The additional forward dividend income boost that resulted from the dividend reinvestments was $41.52. This exceeded the $35 monthly target I have with good margin. The reinvestment of MO generated over 25% of my additional forward dividend income in July, by far the most impactful reinvestment. However, I had 8 stocks contribute over $2 each to the total, and another 7 stocks contribute over $1 each.
As a result of July’s reinvested dividends, I purchased more than 15 new shares of stock. This included almost 3 shares of MO, and over 1 share each of CMCSA, VICI, OGE Energy (OGE) and RPM.
Dividend Raises
July disappointed with dividend raises for my Portfolio. I only heard announcements from 2 of my holdings, with a 3rd choosing to forego any raise.
Of the two raises I did receive, neither raise reached a double-digit percentage, but one topped 7%. Still, this wasn’t enough to result in any significant additional forward dividend income, mainly due to the fact that the two stocks with dividend raises are two of my smallest holdings.
My first raise announcement came from Cummins (CMI). The raise was 7.01%. This didn’t equal the 8.28% boost from CMI last year, but I liked it, especially given what I’ve seen for dividend raises thus far in 2023. Sadly, this added less than $5 to my forward dividend income.
The second and final raise for July was delivered by National Retail Propertied (NNN). The raise was 2.73%, and it too fell short of last year’s 3.77% hike. This raise added a bit more than $3 to my forward dividend income.
It was Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) that failed to offer a dividend raise this July. Thus, WBA is officially in a dividend freeze. This was no surprise given the declining stock price of WBA (reflecting further tough times for the company), and last year’s measly 0.52% dividend raise.
Accounting for both of the dividend raises in July, my forward dividend income only increased by $7.68. This amount failed to top the $9.99 that I secured in July of last year. On the bright side, this wasn’t my worst dividend raise month of 2023. That ‘honor’ goes to February, which was affected by the VFC dividend cut.
I’d have to invest $285.50 at my Portfolio’s current yield of 2.69% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.
Looking ahead to August, I’m expecting better news with regard to dividend raise announcements. I expect to hear from Skyworks Solutions (SWKS), Illinois Tool Works (ITW) and Altria Group (MO). The possibility of a raise from MAIN exists, too. I’d love to see a raise north of 5% from MO, as it’s one of my larger dividend payers. As of this writing, two of these four companies have already announced a dividend hike in the first few days of August, but I’ll save those details for next month.
Dividends Due To New Investment
Short of a pair of buys early in July, my month was quiet with regard to new investment.
With the stock market rising over the past couple of months, not as many stocks are trading as favorably as they once were. So, the slowdown in my buying doesn’t surprise me.
In each purchase case, I added to an existing position. One stock looked quite undervalued, while the other was no screaming bargain, but was a position I’m trying to build out.
Details for the two purchases can be found in the following post…
My buy resulted in an investment of $1,096.90 into my Portfolio. My forward dividend income increased by a total of $32.38. This was my largest boost to forward dividend income from new capital investment in the past 4 months.
With the stocks I bought already being existing holdings, the number of stocks in my Portfolio stayed 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.
I failed to tally triple-digit additional forward dividend income for the second time in the past three months. That’s a trend I wish to avoid.
Accounting for all the sources, I recorded $81.58 of additional forward dividend income in July. This topped last year’s total by roughly $32 thanks to a non-negative contribution from Investment of Capital this time around. However, this month’s tally was a significant step backwards compared to last month, primarily due to a weak contribution from Dividend Raises.
Reinvested Dividends was the leader in July for additional forward dividend income, but Investment of Capital wasn’t too far behind. Dividend Raises was certainly the laggard this month.
While I’m about $9 shy of last year’s pace for additional forward dividend income, one can see that I finished 2022 with some strong numbers (4 months above $200, and nothing less than $181). That will be hard to duplicate during these final 5 months of 2023. Thus, I have a feeling I’m going to come up shy of beating the total from 2022. I’d still like to finish north of $2K so perhaps I can make that happen.
Progress Charts
The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.
I’ve yet to eclipse the July dividend total I put up in 2021, which was when I received that monster T. Rowe Price Group (TROW) special dividend. Next year for sure!
On an annual basis, here’s what the dividend totals look like.
Nearly $10K collected in 7 months of 2023, almost surpassing the total from all of 2019. Not bad at all!
Summary
The first month of each quarter usually provides my smallest dividend total. However, this July was still a solid month for dividends.
I tallied over $1,240 in dividends from 23 dividend payers. A couple of those companies delivered triple-digit dividends, including MO which topped my dividend payers list with more than $132.
YoY dividend growth was outstanding, rising above 18%. This was a terrific rebound from June when YoY growth failed to reach 8%.
I dripped nearly 15.6 new shares of stock by reinvesting my July dividends. This resulted in more than $41 of additional forward dividend income.
Unfortunately, additional forward dividend income from dividend raises was limited in July. The income boost was less than $8, as only two companies (CMI & NNN) contributed, and each is a smaller holding in my Portfolio.
Portfolio transactions weren’t abundant in July either. I made two purchases of existing holdings (BMY & NEE) which added a little more than $32 to my forward dividend income.
Tallying the contributions from all sources, I came up short of my triple-digit monthly target. I did manage to add $81.58, but this was my lowest monthly total of 2023.
As for my Portfolio’s annual forward dividend income, I finished the month with a total of $17,548.83 (or an average of $1,462.40/month). $1.5K/mo. isn’t too far away!
How does your Portfolio fare in the first month of each quarter? Did you receive more dividend raises in July than the two I got? Please share in the Comments!
I have updated the Portfolio & Dividends pages in conjunction with this monthly update.