Recent buy (BIPC) and sell (IBM)

On May 10th I made a new portfolio move consisting of a sell and a purchase.

I sold 7 shares of IBM for about $182 per share. I bought these shares about 10 years ago for $190. So in terms of share price appreciation these shares did nothing in the past 10 years. Including the dividend my purchased returned about 2,6% per year. Nothing really excited. Dividend growth was more or less non-existant in the past years with token, penny increases. Therefore I decided to close out my position and look for better avenues of dividend growth.  

As a replacement I bought 60 shares in Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIPC) for about $35 per share. Brookfield Infrastructure is one of the largest owners and operators of critical global infrastructure networks which facilitate the movement and storage of energy, water, freight, passengers and data. BIPC is one of the few pure play, publicly traded, global infrastructure vehicles that invests in infrastructure assets with stable cash flows, high margins and strong growth prospects.

I've owned BIP a few years ago. As a result of U.S. Internal Revenue Regulations taking effect 1 January 2023, new withholding charges are applied to sales proceeds from certain Publicly Traded Partnerships ("PTPs”) held by investors who are not U.S. taxpayers. The amount of withholding is 10% of sale or distribution proceeds.  This means 10% of the amount of funds that would settle resulting from any transaction or distribution, not just 10% on any calculated profit. Therefore I sold my BIP position prior to this new regulation coming into effect. 

BIPC is not a PTP since it is a regular Canadian corporation, listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

This purchase will add about $100 to my annual dividend income.

Monthly report: April 2024

April is over. It wasn't a good month in terms of stock prices. All the gains from March are more or less gone. I had a few big losers like Intel (-30%!), BMY (-17%),  IBM (-12%) and a lot more smaller losers. Furthermore I had some smaller winners like Unilever, Shell and PM but nothing really fancy. 

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 just under € 300 in dividend income, about the same as last year. This increase is mainly the result of new purchases of Realty Income (here and here). Dividend growth for my other holdings is somewhat muted. Finally the dividend cut from MPW still has its effects.

In the graph below I've shown my monthly dividend income. You can see the rather small increase from April 2023 but the underlying trend is still up.

In the graph below I've showed my cumulative dividend income. The cumulative dividend income is about the same as last year at this point in time. I expect to see a little growth in the coming months, but nothing too serious.

Currently my annual dividend income is around about € 10.700, more or less the same as last month.

How was your April? What is your watchlist?