Total Return In The Industrial Gases Sector: Why Airgas Outperformed Praxair And Air Products And Chemicals

Just before the weekend another article of mine was published on Seeking Alpha. The topic of the article is total return in the industrial gases sector. Total return is based on different variables like revenue, margins, outstanding shares and valuation multiples. Insight into the breakdown of various contributors to total return provides an investor with knowledge about which components have been important and whether repeatability can be expected in the future. Fellow author Eli Inkrot has written at length about this topic, recently in a side-by-side comparison of Kroger (NYSE:KR), Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Target (NYSE:TGT). As I have written about the industrial gases sector before, I was interested to see how this analysis worked out.

You can check it out here, it's called: Total Return In The Industrial Gases Sector: Why Airgas Outperformed Praxair And Air Products And Chemicals

Next purchase: what to do?

I just deposited €1000,- to my brokerage account. Together with the accumulated dividends of the last months (€500) I am able to open up another position in my dividend growth portfolio. Given the fact that the US dollar and the Euro are looking at parity maybe somewhere in the next few months, I was pondering to purchase a Euro-based dividend company. However the 'Euro Dividend All Stars' (maintained by No More Waffles) provided me with less options than I originally anticipated!

I used the following criteria in my search:

• P/E-ratio < 20;
• 3-, 5- and 10 DGR > 6%;
• Yield > 1.5%;

This set of criteria yielded me with 6 investment options. All of those are hovering near their 52wk highs. I only recognized BASF (materials) and BMW (auto industry). However I am not keen on getting into the auto industry. So maybe BASF? Unfortunately they only pay their dividends once per year :(

So what about US dividend stocks? There seems to be some consensus that certain stocks are good buys in the current market environment. I've seen a few 'recent buy' posts about JNJ, T and TROW. However, Praxair (PX) is looking nice at $122 as well (P/E-ratio at 21x though). Blackrock's (BLK) stock price has run up slightly since the beginning of the year, so perhaps TROW is a slightly better option right now? Realty Income (O) decreased almost 10% in the last 3 months and is a monthly dividend payer. Definitely O would be a nice quality addition to my portfolio!

Does someone out there have some good advice for me? Or maybe some other suggestions? I am looking forward to hearing from you :)

Praxair Is My Favorite Play In The Industrial Gases Sector

Recently I searched the CCC list and Westlake Chemical Corp. (NYSE:WLK) popped up on one of my screens. My own, self-made Excel application directly lists all the competitors in the particular industry (Chemical-Specialty), ranked by market cap. Praxair (NYSE:PX), an industrial gases company, was the biggest with a market cap of $38 billion, yet somehow I never heard of the company. However, just by looking at the company overview, I could see that this company could be a potential add-on to my dividend growth portfolio. 

There has only been one in-depth article on Seeking Alpha last year about this industry leader. So I decided to do a write-up of the company. Check out my new article on Seeking Alpha and let me know what you think.