Recent buy: Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIP)

Last week I purchased 32 shares of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (ticker: BIP) for $41,62 per share. BIP pays a quarterly dividend of $0,485 so this purchase adds roughly $62 per year before taxed and FX-change.

The reasons of my purchase are as follows:

• BIP operates a diversified collection of assets generating resilient long-term cash flows. Regulatory frameworks and contracted capacity leads to predictable cash flows.
• Assets are in various businesses like transportation, utilities, energy, data infrastructure which can be described as recession resistant.
• Its business is diversified over different areas, but also in a geographic manner. 
• No significant debt maturities in next five years.
• Yield of 4,7%.
• Dividend growth of more than 9% per year in the last five years.
• Price-to-AFFO is around 16x, which seems like a fair price (but who knows!)
• Desire to further increase the diversification in my own portfolio by adding another utility-like business.

Thanks for reading! What do you think of my purchase?

Dividend Report: June 2020

We're done with June! Let's see how many companies sent me a dividend check for my ownership. These checks are the results of decisions I made earlier in life, sometimes years ago, where I decided to purchase shares in these companies. Nowaydays I still collect these checks but I have to do absolutely nothing to receive them. They just get deposited in my brokerage account, no questions asked. Isn't that great?!

Compared to last year I received a 10% higher dividend income. I received almost € 175 before taxes, about € 150 after. As mentioned earlier, the dividend cut of Shell stings. However, my additions to Unilever, Aflac, and earlier purchases of BEP and JNJ offered some relief. Of course the dividend raises from TROW and UNP were welcome as well! In total I got paid by 12 different companies. 

Based on stock prices, almost all of my companies ended lower. Only BEP increased slightly. Big losers are Aflac, Exxon, Shell, Omega Healthcare. All of these companies decreased between 13 to 17%.

If I look at my progress based on the cumulative dividend income this year I am still about 25% ahead compared to last year. That sounds perfect, especially during these rough times! However, I expect this growth percentage to come down during the year because of the dividend cuts I received in the last two months and the slow dividend growth going forward.

My current forward dividend is slightly below € 1.700,-. I just keep doing what I've been doing in the last years: work, earn money, deposit into my brokerage as much as I can and keep buying income producing assets to enhance my financial situation. Rinse and repeat.

Dividend raise: Realty Income

Recently Realty Income Corporation (Realty Income, NYSE: O) announced its Board of Directors has declared an increase in the company's common stock monthly cash dividend to $0.2335 per share from $0.233 per share. This raise adds a whopping € 0,14 to my annual dividend income. Ka-ching!

All jokes aside, Realty Income increases their dividend on more than one occasion each year. Last year they raised the dividend 5 times. This is their fourth raise already in 2020. Hopefully there's more to come this year!

So far this is my 17th dividend raise (and two cuts). The Royal Dutch Shell dividend cut still stings and weights heavily on the dividend growth this year. All the raises combined added roughly € 95 to my annual dividend income, however the two cuts decreased my dividend income with more than € 170, for a net reduction of € 77. Let's what the rest of 2020 brings us. I'll keep you updated!

Did you like the dividend raise of O? Do you think the dividend is safe during COVID-19 times?