Dividend Portfolio Update for January 2017

It’s time once again to take a look at my Dividend Portfolio and see how we fared for January 2017. A lot has happened in the United States the last few months and perhaps the biggest piece of news is that Donald Trump has been inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. While this brings a bunch of uncertainty to the table, we should all hope for the best and that his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”, does in fact come true and I wish him the best.

This month marks the first month where I started to manually DRIP my dividend payouts back into the companies in order to compound my future returns in hopes of one day being able to quit my full time job and concentrate on the things that I would love to do.

Let’s take a look at what happened to the dividend portfolio last month!

Deposits

Twice a month, I usually tell my Robinhood App account to auto-deposit $150 from my checking account. I decided my goal for this year was to try and put more money into my dividend portfolio, so I went ahead and upped my auto-deposit amount to $200. So every month, the Robinhood App will autodeposit $400 from my checking account. I also managed to put an additional $500 into the account this month, $250 more than my stated Goals for 2017.

Total: $200 + $200 + $500= $900

Dividend Payouts

While it’s not as good as the monstrous income that I received last month, I can’t complain at all about receiving free passive income to the tune of $75.29. Of course, I went ahead and reinvested the dividends back into the companies to keep the return compounding in the future. This means I spent some more cash in my account to round up to full shares.

The only dividend that I didn’t reinvest was MAIN since I sold out of that last month. In its place, I went ahead and contributed MAIN’s dividend to buying a share of GE. 

Let’s go ahead and talk about about this month’s purchases now.

Stock Purchases

I  purchase a few new stocks in January and manually DRIP’d the companies that paid out dividends to me this month. 

• 7 shares CVS @80.00

CVS is a well known pharmacy company that operates retail drugstores, online retail pharmacy websites and its retail healthcare clinics.They’re currently trading at a P/E Ratio of 17 after a recent dip on news that they lost a contract. I still believe that CVS is here to stay and they are currently paying a 2.4% dividend yield. They have a 32 year history of paying dividends and are currently classified as a Dividend Contender with 14 years of increasing dividends. They currently sit around a 42% EPS payout ratio which means that the dividend is pretty safe. They also have a 5 year dividend growth rate of over 27%!  The board just announced an 18% increase to the annual dividend which means each share of CVS returns $2.00 in dividends a year. This adds $14.00 to my annual income!

• 1 share of SDIV @ 21.28

With Robinhood, buying one share of a stock with no trading fees is 100% doable. This means manually DRIPing is something that can be done if you don’t mind paying the extra capital to round it up to a full share. I went ahead and purchased one more share of SDIV, a dividend ETF. Currently, SDIV is giving a 7.3% yield. This adds $1.57 to my annual income!

• 1 share of CAH @73.45

Another DRIP’d purchased that comes from Cardinal Health. The dividend yield sits at 2.3% and returns $1.80 per share a year. This Dividend Contender currently sits around a P/E ratio of 18 and has been paying increasing dividends for 20 years. At an EPS payout ratio of only 43%, this stock has plenty of oomph to keep raising their dividends over the years. CAH has a 5-year dividend growth rate of 15.3% too! This adds $1.80 to my annual income!

• 2 shares of CSCO @30.75

DRIP’d. CSCO provides technology and services to its customers including cloud, video, mobility, security, collaboration and analytics. They currently sit around a P/E ratio of 14 and has been paying increasing dividends for the last 6 years. They have also been aggressively growing their dividend with their 1/3/5 year DGR at 20%/15%/40% respectively. Their EPS payout ratio currently sits at 49% with plenty of room to grow. I accidently bought 2 shares of this stock, oh well. This adds $1.04 to my annual income

• 1 share of CLDT @ 20.25

CLDT is a REIT that specializes in premium-branded upscale extended-stay and select-service hotels. I’ve recently trimmed some shares of CLDT in the past due to being over extended but I’ve had nothing but success with them so I’m not too worried about grabbing an extra share. They currently sit at a 6.4% div yield and are classified as a Dividend Challenger with 7 years of increasing dividends. As a bonus, they pay out monthly in 3 month spurts.  This adds $1.32 to my annual income.

• 3 shares of GE @ $30.02

GE is an industrial company that makes aircraft engines, power generation and oil and gas production equipment to medical imaging, financing and industrial products. They’re currently returning a 3.1% dividend yield and have a rocky past with being removed recently from the Dividend Challengers list for not increasing their dividend. While they don’t fit my dividend criteria, they still have been paying dividends for the last 54 years. This adds $2.88 to my annual income.

• 30 shares of SBSI @ $36.20

SBSI is a rather unique stock that not only pays dividends in the form of cash quarterly, but they also pay out a dividend in stocks in the form of a 21:20 split every year in April. At on top of that they have been paying a special dividend in the last quarter of the year, the return on them have been amazing. They are a Dividend Contender has been increasing dividends for the last 22 years. They’re currently sitting at a P/E ratio of 19 and have a 2.7% dividend yield with an EPS payout ratio of 53%. This adds $30.00 to my annual income.

• 10 shares of GILD @ $70.95

GILD is a biotech company that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialization of medicines in areas of unmet medical needs. They’ve had a rough year and the price has driven the dividend yield to 2.6%. They are also new to the dividend game since they only just started in June of 2015. This is one of my more risky dividend plays. This adds $18.80 to my annual income.

• 15 shares of TGT @ $63.95

I’ve jumped in and out of TGT in the last year mostly due to the retail sector being hit pretty hard lately. I decided that it was a good time to get into this Dividend Champion. They have 49 years of increasing dividends! Add on to that they have a 3/5/10 year DGR of 13%/16%/18% respectively. Currently, they sit on a EPS payout ratio of 44% This adds $36.00 to my annual income!

• 27 shares of QCOM @ $55.20

QCOM is a a digital communication company that has recently been hit pretty hard due to a pending lawsuit where the company dropped 12% in a day. I figure it was a good time to take a bite. They currently trade at a P/E Ratio of 16% and offer a dividend yield of 3.9%. They are a dividend contender with 14 years of increasing dividend and currently sit at a 3/5/10 Dividend Growth Rate of 16%/19%/16% respectively. With an EPS Payout ratio of 54%, QCOMM still has room for more growth. This adds $57.24 to my annual income!

• 1 share of STWD @ $22.60

STWD is a REIT that I got into last year and have been very happy with in terms of growth and yield. The one share purchased is DRIP’d from their dividend. Since I’ve purchased them, the share price has gone up almost 20% with 4 dividend payments of $0.48 a share. While they don’t raise their dividend every year like other stocks, they are at least consistent with a dividend yield of 8.5%. I don’t recommend them right now since they don’t follow our goals but I’m going to stick with them until they do something I don’t like. This adds $1.92 to my annual income.

All these stock purchases have added a grand total of $166.56 to my annual income.

Stock Sells

None.

Conclusion

We’ve added $166.56 to my annual income in this month alone. This is outstanding and I wish I can keep up this pace for the entire year. I hope with frugal living and passive income from alternate sources, that I can continue to add more into my account in order to keep purchasing more high quality dividend growth stocks. I hope everybody else had a great month and I’ll see you next time!