Recent dividend raises (TROW, BHP, AD, CSCO, WMT, KO)

In the last week I received several raises that boosted my dividend income! So let's see who decided to give me more money and how much!

• T. Rowe Price Group (TROW) has announced that it will be increasing its dividend by 11% on the 30th of March to $1.20. Given my recent additions to TROW this raise adds more than €16 to my annual dividend income.
• BHP announced a raise in its semi-annual dividend to $ 3 per share (from $2,02 last year). This gigantic raise adds more than €24 to my annual dividend income with just this payment.
• Ahold Delhaize announced a raise in its semi-annual dividend to €0,52 per share (from €0,40 last year). This is a nice raise, which adds € 6 to my annual dividend income.
• Cisco (CSCO) raised its quarterly dividend by a rather small amount, just like Walmart (WMT).
• Finally Coca-Cola raised its dividend by almost 5%. This is a solid raise, given the raises in the last years.

All of these raises combined will deliver an annual income boost of more than € 50 in 2022 (and hopefully more after 2022!). In total I have received raises which will boost my annual dividend income by over € 100. That's a solid start of the year!

Three recent dividend increases (TROW, CSCO and BBL)

A few days ago I wrote about four recent dividend increases. The pace of raises continues with a few new raises! Of course I am happy with these raises, especially after a somewhat sobering 2020 in terms of dividend growth. So let's take a look at the raises.

T. Rowe Price

On February 9 T. Rowe Price (TROW) declared a $1.08/share quarterly dividend, which is a whopping 20% increase from its prior dividend of $0.90. Last year TROW increased its dividend by a massive 18% as well. I received five dividend raises since my purchase of TROW back in 2016. The quarterly dividend payment has exactly doubled since that time! My return on investment is currently around 20% per annum so I am not complaining.

Cisco

On the same day Cisco (CSCO) declared a $0.37/share quarterly dividend, which is modest 2.8% increase from its prior dividend of $0.36. I recently purchased shares in Cisco its my first dividend raise. It's not big raise but its one nonetheless. We'll see what happens next year!

BHP

Today BHP released their financial results for the half-year ended 31 December 2020. The results definitely looked solid with increasing earnings and margins, higher cashflow and shareholder returns and lower debt. They declared a dividend of $1,01 per share (which is $2,02 for the BBL shares). This is an increase of more than 50% compared to its March payment last year.

Summary

Together these raises increased my forward annual dividend income by roughly €30. Based on my portfolio's dividend yield of 3,9% I have to invest € 770 to get this kind of dividend income, but now I get it for free! Rock on!

Recent Buy: Cisco

Last week I purchased 35 shares of Cisco Systems Inc. (ticker: CSCO) for $ 39,11 per share. CSCO pays a quarterly dividend of $0,36 so this purchase adds roughly $50 per year before taxes and FX-change.

 The reasons of my purchase are as follows:

• Cisco is quite cheap based on its forward PE-ratio: about 12,5x. In the past 5 years the PE-ratio hovered somewhere between 12 tot 20x so the current price seems relatively cheap.
  
• I don't have a big exposure to tech in my portfolio, only IBM and Intel. 
  
• Cisco's dividend yield is decent at about 3,7% and there is room for growth with a payout ratio less than 50%.
• Dividend growth in the last 5 years has been really solid at 13%. I don't expect this growth to continue (although it would be nice) but a dividend growth of 6-8% coupled with a dividend yield of 3,7% and buybacks will deliver a solid total return.
  
• Its balance sheet is rock-solid. Enough cash ($30 billion) to cover its entire debt-load. And if that's not enough, Cisco's annual free cashflow is enough to cover its debt load as well.
• Total return in recent years has been less than the S&P500. I expect "reversion to the mean" works for Cisco as well.
  
• The DGI community has been buying Cisco as well, so that counts for something :-)
  

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