June was another good month for the stock market. My Portfolio value continued to climb higher and those reliable dividends continued to come in. And boy did the dividends come filing in. It was a record month for dividend income!
Now this month’s dividends are going to look ultra-impressive (compared to a normal month of mine) due to a big dividend payment that slipped from May into June. However, I still would have had record dividend income in June without the favorable timing of that dividend. That alone is reason to celebrate!
Let’s see what else transpired in my Portfolio in June by getting a quick preview of this month’s report…
You already know that I bested my previous monthly dividend income record of $2,409.18, but how high did the total get? And what did that mean for my Year-over-Year (YoY) growth for June? Those answers are coming in just a bit.
I haven’t stopped reinvesting the majority of my dividends into the holdings that paid them. The question is… did this result in another $50+ of additional forward dividend income, which is the level I hope to cross each month. I’d wager that I was successful.
The summer months tend to provide a minimal number of dividend raises for my Portfolio, and that was the case in June. I tied for the lowest number of raises in a month so far in 2025, and the additional forward dividend income from those was far from triple-digit territory due to less-than-stellar raise percentages.
Portfolio transactions were limited in June. Only a single buy was made. However, it was a chunky investment that led to a hefty increase in my additional forward dividend income.
My monthly additional forward dividend income from my 3 sources (reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and investment of capital) hit a 2025 high in June. One source stole the show in June and you can probably guess which source it was that led the way based on my previous comments.
There are updated progress charts to see as well. One of the charts required a Y-axis adjustment in June… which is always exciting.
Here are my details for all things dividends for June 2025, starting with my dividend income…
Dividend Income
Oh boy! Serious dividend income was collected in June. It was my best month ever! My Portfolio raked in an amazing $2,645.91 in dividends. This topped last June’s total of $2,002.22 by well over $600.
The shifting dividend payment from Nexstar Media Group (NXST), my largest dividend of the month, really swung June’s dividend total to the high side. However, I would have still squeaked out a new record of $2,423.97 even without the shift.
YoY dividend growth looked awesome as well, at 32.15%. Amazingly, this didn’t top the 34.41% from March. In any case, June’s YoY dividend growth more than doubled my 15% target.
Also a record… a total of 26 companies paid me a dividend in June. More impressive… half of these companies delivered a triple-digit dividend to my Portfolio during the month. My other dividend payments were good, too, as only 4 failed to exceed $50.
As already noted, NXST delivered my largest dividend in June, with a payment of $221.94. Recent Portfolio addition Alphabet (GOOG) provided my smallest dividend of the month at $5.25.
The increased dividend amounts from Enbridge (ENB), NextEra Energy (NEE), UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Visa (V), Hershey Co. (HSY) and Microsoft (MSFT) 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 $30 in YoY dividend gains from Aflac (AFL), and in excess of $28 from NXST. I counted almost $14 from Pepsico (PEP), better than $12 each from Qualcomm (QCOM) and T. Rowe Price Group (TROW), and topped $10 from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). There were plenty of forward dividend income additions!
Of the June stocks that paid me both last year and this year, just one had a payout reduction. This was a reduction from Broadcom (AVGO) that stemmed from my trim of the stock back in February when it was looking overvalued. Of course the stock has powered 17% higher since then. Another AVGO trim may be on the table… we’ll see.
As for new dividend payers in June, I had half a dozen of them. I’ll start with the two closed-end funds: DNP Select Income Fund (DNP) and BlackRock Health Sciences Trust (BME), which provided $67.03 and $58.81, respectively. These are monthly payers. NXST was the big new dividend, and it was due to a minor change in dividend payment dates (as previously mentioned). Chevron (CVX) debuted with a hefty $112.80 dividend, while Flowers Foods (FLO) provided a solid $52.65, followed by a modest $5.25 from Alphabet (GOOG).
Two stocks no longer paid me a dividend this June. I gave up the $57.90 dividend from Pinnacle West Capital (PNW) when I exited the position back in early February due to some overvaluation and its slowing dividend growth. As for Whirlpool (WHR), I happily left behind its dividend of $28.12 when I purged the stock from my Portfolio, as the stock was cratering and its dividend safety was sinking.
Most of my dividends got automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them. The exceptions were: 1) the partial dividend reinvestment of ENB due to a portion of the dividend being withheld for foreign tax purposes, and 2) I’m in the middle of transferring my brokerage account into a trust account, and dividend reinvestment has stopped during the transition. You’ll see 8 different holdings (plus the Main Street Capital (MAIN) special dividend) that didn’t have their dividends reinvested due to this transition. I expect reinvestment to return to normal around the middle of July.
The result of all the dividend reinvestment that did take place was an additional $56.63 of forward dividend income. Topping $50 due to dividend reinvestment is my target each month and I was happy to achieve that.
The reinvestment of my NXST dividend accounted for more than $9 of the forward dividend income total. The ENB, CVX and DNP reinvestments each added better than $5. I realized another $4 each from AFL, JNJ and Skyworks Solutions (SWKS).
As a result of June’s dividends that did get reinvested, I dripped more than 22 new shares of stock. DNP accounted for nearly 7 shares all by itself. FLO dripped over 3 shares while ENB exceeded 2 shares. AFL, SWKS and NXST each tacked on more than 1 share due to their dividend reinvestments.
Dividend Raises
June ended up looking a lot like May in terms of dividend raises. Once again, I netted 4 dividend raises. That’s my 3rd straight month doing that. Interestingly, all my raises were announced in the first half of the month.
Through the first half of 2025 dividend raises have continued to move slightly downward in terms of the raise percentages. This continues the trend I’ve been seeing over the past couple of years.
While my raise percentages in June were a bit higher than last month, they came from smaller dividend payers. This resulted in a little less additional forward dividend income from the raises.
My raises started with UnitedHealth Group (UNH) delivering a 5.24% raise, resulting in $13.21 of additional forward dividend income. This raise was less than half the 11.7% hike from last year – so a major haircut. This is the first time since 2009 that UNH failed to raise by a double-digit percentage.
Next up was FedEx (FDX) with a 5.07% hike to its dividend. Since FDX is one of my smallest payers, the impact to my forward dividend income was muted at just $4.69. Last year FDX had a 9.52% dividend raise, so this was almost a 50% decrease.
The predictable, quarterly token raise from Realty Income (O) was announced shortly thereafter. It was a 0.19% raise that added only $0.68 to my forward dividend income. This is definitely not a needle-mover, but at least O is consistent in providing the token raise.
Finishing up my dividend raises for June was the 7.09% raise from Caterpillar (CAT). This was my largest June raise in percentage terms, and it was also the largest in terms of bumping up my forward dividend income. The dividend increase added $18.96 to my income. Unfortunately, this raise from CAT came up short of the 8.46% raise provided last year.
After accounting for all my June dividend raises, my forward dividend income increased by $37.54. CAT provided just over half of this amount by itself, with UNH accounting for a decent chunk as well. Sadly, this total was a few dollars less than what I was able to gain last month.
I’d have to invest $1,395.54 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 July, I may drop to my lowest number of dividend raises for any month this year. I anticipate a meager 3 dividend raises to be coming. I expect to hear from Cummins (CMI), NNN REIT (NNN) and Hershey Co. (HSY). The possibility of getting a raise from Union Pacific (UNP) and Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) exists, too. One company in my Portfolio already announced a dividend raise this month, but I’ll save that for next month’s report.
Dividends Due To New Investment
After executing two moves in May, I cut that number in half in June with just a single transaction – a buy of a new Portfolio holding.
I invested a good amount into a closed-end fund (CEF), the 3rd CEF for my Portfolio, and it resulted in a sizable boost to my forward dividend income.
The distributions from this CEF are made monthly and I look forward to collecting them given their good size.
The details for my lone June transaction can be found in this post…
My transaction resulted a net investment of $5,068.00 into my Portfolio, with my forward dividend income advancing by a whopping $540.00. This is an effective yield of 10.66% for the investment.
I should note that during the transition of my brokerage account to a trust account this month (which I mentioned earlier), a fractional share sale of UNH was made, which resulted in $67.54 coming out of my Portfolio, and a reduction of $1.95 in forward dividend income. Since this sale was small and not initiated by me, I’m not considering it as a transaction of mine, but I do account for the change it created in my net investment and forward dividend income.
Thus, the net investment into my Portfolio is adjusted to $5,000.46, and the net boost to my forward dividend income changed to $538.05.
With my one buy being a new Portfolio position, the number of stocks/funds in my Portfolio rose to 60.
Tallying Up The Additional Forward Dividend Income
In 2025, 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 2024 totals as well, so that we can compare as the year progresses.
Well, the dwindling additional forward dividend income monthly totals in 2025 came to a hard stop in June. Not only that, but June provided my best monthly total so far in 2025… by a wide margin.
Accounting for all the sources, I tacked on $632.22 of additional forward dividend income in June. This more than tripled the $209.91 from June of last year.
The primary source for that new income was Investment of Capital. The $538.05 it added in June nearly matched the $589.96 that I saw all of last year.
Reinvested Dividends came through with another solid total in June after being the leading source last month. I was happy to top $50 once again with the $56.63 total.
Surprisingly, Dividend Raises was my weakest source for the month. That didn’t occur in 2024, or the start of 2025… until now. Dividend Raises provided $37.54 of additional forward dividend income – which wasn’t that bad, to be honest.
Investment of Capital has already exceeded its additional forward dividend income total from all of 2024, and Reinvested Dividends remains on pace to exceed the additional forward dividend income total it generated last year. It’s a different story with regard to Dividend Raises, as I’m about $100 off last year’s pace. This is just further evidence that Dividend Raises are not as good as they’ve been in the past. As a group, however, my 3 sources look to blow out last year’s additional forward dividend income total. I’m over 75% of the way to $2,441.98, with half the year to go. I like that!
Progress Charts
The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.
Due to my record dividend total this month, I had to adjust the Y-axis scale to accommodate June’s number. That’s a problem I can live with!
On an annual basis, here’s what the dividend totals look like.
With another $300 in dividend income in the first half of 2025, I could have exceeded my dividend total for all of 2020. The progress is inspiring.
Summary
After my May dividend income was negatively impacted by a shifting NXST dividend payment (moved from May to June), I reaped the benefits this month. That NXST dividend showed up in June and it boosted my dividend total quite a bit. It was my largest dividend of the month, too, so it made a noticeable impact.
June’s dividend total finished at a record $2,645.91. Also, YoY growth spiked to a massive 32.15% after being negative last month.
There were a record 26 dividend payments for my Portfolio in June as well. Half of those dividend payments reached triple-digits, with a hefty $221.94 coming from NXST.
Investment of Capital led all my sources in terms of delivering additional forward dividend income in June – despite having only a single buy. My chunky investment (just over $5K) in another CEF (PCN this time), led to more than $538 in new income.
Reinvested Dividends provided its typically steady amount of additional forward dividend income, too. It added north of $56, making it 5 consecutive months that it’s topped $50.
Somewhat surprisingly, my normally stellar Dividend Raises provided the least additional forward dividend income of my 3 sources, which highly unusual.
My Portfolio received another 4 Dividend Raises in June, just as expected. Three of those four raises exceeded 5%, but the dividend payers weren’t some of my largest, so the impact wasn’t as large as one might believe. Additional forward dividend income approached $38 for this source.
Tallying the contributions from all sources, over $632 of forward dividend income was added to my Portfolio in June. I’m well on my way to record additional forward dividend income in 2025. In just half the year, I’m better than 3/4 of the way to surpassing last year’s record total of $2,441.98.
Did you post record dividend income in June?… quarter-ending months usually do the trick! Have you noticed dividend raises trending down in percentage terms over the past year or two? Please share in the Comments!
I have updated the Portfolio & Dividends pages in conjunction with this monthly update.