Dividend Portfolio Update for April 2017

Summary

• A good month with $103.23 in dividends
• Car loan officially paid off

April was another solid month in terms of passive income and accomplishing my yearly goals. Nine great companies have paid me this month for simply holding a few of their shares. A great way of acquiring passive income is by holding high quality companies and receiving their quarterly paychecks. Seriously, I recommend it!

In other news, I officially sent the last car payment to the bank. I’ve discussed this before in my 2017 Goals post that I wanted to aggressively pay the loan down in order to free up cash flow every month. I had originally planned to space out the payments for the entire year but after much debating with my significant other, we decided to go ahead and use our tax return to help pay a big chunk of that off. After that it was just a double payment away until it was all gone.

This of course has hurt my ability to add additional funds into my dividend portfolio but now that it’s gone, I can roll the car payment into my Robinhood account!

The stock market is climbing back up to all-time highs again and my portfolio is slightly lagging behind, return wise. It was still a good return for the month at a 0.77% return.

Account Deposits

I’ve already talked about putting all my financial efforts into my car loan but I also didn’t want to neglect my dividend portfolio. I managed to do my normal $200 auto-deposit twice again this month. On top of that, I managed to sneak an extra $275 into it. Not too bad. I’m hoping next month will be way better.

$200+200+275 = $675

Dividend Payouts

It was a very nice month in terms of dividends. For the month, the portfolio managed to collect $103.23 in dividend payments. If only every other month was as good as March!

The following is a breakdown :

KO has had a rough few months. It seems this dividend giant has been facing growth issues as of late but the dividend seems to be as strong as ever with it raising it’s dividend 5.7% for this year. KO also had good earnings (missed EPS but beat revenue). There was also news that they will be laying off 1.2k corporate jobs in Atlanta. While this usually isn’t a good sign, I’m hoping KO is merely trying to put its ducks in a row.

CAH also had it pretty rough in April with shares dropping over 12% in a single day on news that they were buying three businesses from Medtronic and that they had lowered guidance for 2017.

CSCO declared $0.29/share quarterly dividend, 11.5% increase from prior dividend of $0.26. This is the type of DGR that I love to see.

Dividend Total for April 2017 : +$103.23

Stock Purchases

• 10 shares of VZ @ $48.49
• 5 shares of VZ @ $47.26

VZ has been on a down trend since the beginning of 2017. I went ahead and added some more shares and then added even more when the price kept going down. VZ has been paying dividends for the last 33 years. While I believe they have some things to figure out as it relates to revenue and competitive pricing, I don’t believe we’ll see it going anywhere anytime soon. It’s currently sitting at a 5% yield and a PE ratio of just 15. This adds +$34.80 to my annual income.

• 5 shares of QCOM @ $52.38

I added additional shares of QCOM to average down more after they’ve been on a downtrend after news that AAPL had filed lawsuits. They recently just announced an increase of their dividend by 7.5% though. Companies sue each other all the time so I’m not too worried about it. This adds +$10.60 to my annual income.

• 3 shares of IBM @ $160.38

Another case of averaging down. They have hit a rough patch in terms of revenue the last few years but their dividend keeps getting stronger. They recently announced a 7.1% dividend increase on top of it. They are currently sitting at a 3.7% yield with a low PE ratio of just 13.  I do  hope they iron out their revenue issues soon though.  This adds +$18.00 to my annual income.

Total: +$63.40 annual income

Stock Sells

Absolutely nothing.

But I’ve been debating on selling my 5 shares of AAPL. I don’t own a whole lot and I’m up almost 30% on them. Their yield sits just under 2%.

Conclusion

April was a pretty solid month overall. I’m hoping with an influx of deposits that I’m able to do in the upcoming months, I can increase my passive income even further. My only hesitation is with the markets at all time highs is it better to hold on for the inevitable “crash” as people have been talking about. Thoughts? Oh well, until next time!