Recent buy: UNP

Three weeks ago I purchased 10 additional shares of Union Pacific. UNP operates North America's premier railroad franchise, covering 23 states in the western two-thirds of the United States.

My first purchase was back in May 2015. The stock price was about $108 and yielded 2,0% at the time. During the last year I purchased additional shares on two other occasions. Back in October 2022 10 shares and earlier this year 5 shares. The yield on these last purchases was around 2,4 tot 2,7%. For this recent purchase I paid $196 per share which puts the yield at 2,6%.

Over the 8 years I've had UNP in my portfolio the dividend on my original purchase has grown at more than 11% per year. Dividend growth is lumpy with years of 20% dividend growth and years with just 5%. I am more than pleased with the results of UNP. My total return for this position is just under 10%, so that includes dividend and stock price appreciation. UNP currently is my biggest equity position at 4,5% of my portfolio. Only the investment in my (own) employers company is bigger.

For now I guess my position in UNP seems full. This purchase adds about $50 to my forward annual dividend income.

Recent buy: AOS

This is a rather late post to mention the fact that I have opened a position in AOS. Back in February I bought 25 shares for about $66 per share. A few years ago I wrote an article on Seeking Alpha about the company and its growth prospects in China and India.

The current yield is rather low (about 1,8%) but so is the payout ratio (about 35%). The dividend has grown about 18% per year in the last 10 years. But it seems to be slowing down somewhat in the last 5 years but still a respectable rate of 13% per year.

This purchase will add about $30 to my forward annual dividend income.

 

Monthly report: April 2023

April is over! For almost three so this update is rather late, but I guess I was a bit busy.

April was a rather slow month. More than enough macro-economic news but the stock market didn't really react to it in a big way. We'll see what happens in the coming months. In the end it's all about the dividend income. Since I am not a seller of stocks at this point in my life, I don't really care about lower prices.

In my portfolio I had a few winners, like BAX (+18%), MDT (+14%) and MRK (+7%), but I also had some losers, mainly in the chip sector like TXN and CSCO (-10%), INTC and ASML (-7-8%). Deere also lost about 8%.

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?!

A total of almost € 300 after tax. Nine companies paid me dividends. The dividend income increased by more than 125% compared to last year. This increase is mainly the result of an additional purchases in Ahold Delhaize (here), MPW (here and here), MDT (here) and Realty Income (here). Dividend growth for my other holdings are somewhat muted.

In the graph below I've showed my cumulative dividend income for 2023 (which obviously is just the first four months of the year). But the start is great, mainly due to the month of janary! What is awesome to see is that the income from last month is higher than my annual income from last year. I've take some serious steps.

Currently my annual dividend income is just over € 13.000.

How was your April? What is your watchlist?