Preferred Apartment Communities (APTS) was founded in 2011. The REIT focuses on multifamily buildings (e.g. apartments), student housing properties, office buildings, and grocery-anchored retail centers. It also originates real estate loans to developers, receiving interest payments and the option to purchase finished projects.

Founded in 1883, Kroger (KR) is America's second largest grocer behind only Walmart with over $120 billion in annual sales. The company operates over 2,700 supermarkets, many with pharmacies and fuel centers on premise. Kroger's stores are in 35 states and serve more than 11 million shoppers each day. In addition to traditional grocery shopping, Kroger also offers convenient pickup and delivery options to almost all households within the company's reach.

Costco (COST) was founded in 1976 and pioneered the membership warehouse business model. The company is one of the world’s largest sellers of groceries, alcohol, diamonds, electronics, prescription drugs, tires, gasoline, and even travel services. Costco operates over 775 store locations, mostly in North America.

On September 5, Meredith (MDP) issued weak guidance for the year ahead. The company's leverage profile and payout ratio will now remain elevated for longer than we expected, and execution risk has also increased. As a result, we downgraded Meredith's Dividend Safety Score from Safe to Borderline Safe. Meredith's dividend still seems unlikely to be cut for now and the stock's sharp sell-off feels like a bit of an overreaction, but the company's margin for error has shrunk.  Let's take a closer look at Meredith's outlook and dividend profile.

Meredith (MDP) is one of the nation's oldest media and publishing companies, having been founded in 1902 as an agricultural publisher. At its core, Meredith provides consumers with content by leveraging print, digital, mobile, video, and broadcast TV media platforms. Nationally, the firm reaches over 180 million American consumers. Advertising accounts for a little over half of Meredith's revenue and is driven by selling print ads (22% of firm-wide sales), spot ads on broadcast TV stations (13%), and digital ads across the company's websites (12%).

Earlier this year, we published a note reviewing Macy's dividend safety profile and struggles turning around its brick-and-mortar retail business. In the note, we said that Macy's Borderline Safe Dividend Safety Score was predicated in part on the company's turnaround efforts not stalling more than they already have. Unfortunately, Macy's turnaround efforts have appeared to do just that. Despite a healthy economy and strong results from other retailers, Macy's reported disappointing earnings last month, forcing management to lower its full-year earnings guidance. Macy's earnings per share have now declined 12% over the past year, and analysts expect Macy's EPS to drop a further 26% over the next twelve months.

In December 2015, Dow (DOW) and DuPont (DD) announced plans to merge, then break up into three independent companies. The idea was to create larger, more focused businesses by combining the areas of overlap in their complementary portfolios. Here's a look at each company's 2015 revenue mix. As you can see, Dow and DuPont each had large agriculture and performance materials businesses which management believed would be better off together.

Philip Morris International (PM) surprised investors last week when the firm confirmed it was in discussions with Altria (MO) about a potential all-stock, merger of equals. After all, these two tobacco giants had separated just over a decade ago when Altria spun off Philip Morris International in 2008. The idea of a potential reunion has not been received well by the market. On August 27 shares of Philip Morris International plunged nearly 11% on the news and remain 7% below their pre-announcement price.

Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) was founded in 1855 and is one of North America's largest banks. The firm's revenue is fairly balanced between net interest income, or lending businesses (57% of sales), and non-interest income operations (43% of revenue is from non-lending businesses such as insurance policies, card services, service charges, asset management, credit fees, brokerage services, etc.).  

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (CBRL) has been in business since 1969 and operates a chain of more than 650 company-owned restaurants located throughout the U.S. Cracker Barrel's country-themed, full-service restaurants offer diners a variety of breakfast (24% of sales), lunch (39%), and dinner (37%) foods with meals costing about $10 on average.  Each restaurant location also has a large gift shop, which offers decorative and functional items, such as apparel and accessories, packaged foods, decor, toys , and bed and bath goods. In 2018, about 80% of Cracker Barrel's revenue was generated from restaurants, with the remaining 20% from its gift shops.