Learn About Simply Safe Dividends
[/fusion_text]
These are our most recent articles. Also see which stocks have been this week’s best and worst performers.
Buckeye Partners (BPL) Hints That Payout Cut Might Be Coming
Buckeye Partners (BPL) has long been a favorite master limited partnership (MLP) among income investors. That's thanks to the firm's impressive track record of steadily growing payouts which up until recently included 22 straight years of annual distribution increases and 32 years of uninterrupted payments. However, the MLP bear market, now in its fourth year, has put Buckeye Partners under immense strain and forced it to freeze its distribution growth in 2017. And now continued deterioration in its fundamentals has sent the yield to 14% as investors start pricing in a potential distribution cut. How likely is Buckeye Partners to actually cut its payout? Well, as we first pointed out in our March 2018 thesis, the signs aren't looking good. Fundamentals [...]
Assessing Walmart’s Appeal as a Dividend Growth Stock After Earnings Beat
Shares of Walmart (WMT) surged 10% following the release of the company’s second-quarter earnings report. The big headline is that Walmart’s sales growth was its best in more than a decade. Specifically, Walmart reported 4.5% growth across its U.S. stores that have been open for at least a year, driven by strength in its grocery business. The company's 2.2% customer traffic gain was also its strongest in more than six years, indicating that brick-and-mortar retail continues to have a pull even in the age of Amazon. Importantly, e-commerce sales increased 40%, in line with management’s expectations and up from 33% growth reported in the first quarter. Simply put, Walmart’s top line growth gave investors increased hope that the company is [...]
Bill Gates’ Portfolio: Reviewing One of the Wealthiest Man’s Dividend Stocks – August 2018 Update
Bill Gates is the second wealthiest man on the planet with a net worth in excess of $90 billion. Just like you and me, Bill wants to earn a return on his pile of cash. Of the 17 publicly-traded companies held in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, 13 pay dividends. In this article, I track and analyze changes in Bill Gates’ portfolio of dividend stocks. The first quarter of 2018 was uneventful. No new companies were added to the portfolio, and all of the trust's existing core holdings were largely unchanged. Gates' trust trimmed its position in Microsoft (MSFT) by 16%. Microsoft appeared as a new position in the second quarter of 2017 and was likely transferred [...]
MetLife (MET): A High-Yield Insurer Paying Uninterrupted Dividends Since 2000
Founded in 1863, MetLife (MET) offers a range of insurance products (life, dental, disability, vision, and accident and health coverages), annuities, employee benefits, and asset management. In total, the company's services are offered in over 50 countries around the world and serve more than 100 million individual and institutional customers. MetLife operates through five business segments: U.S: 42% of adjusted earnings Asia: 21% of adjusted earnings Latin America: 9% of adjusted earnings Europe, Middle East: 5% of adjusted earnings MetLife Holdings: products and businesses that are no longer actively marketed in the U.S., such as certain life insurance products, different annuities, and long-term care insurance: 23% of adjusted earnings. While the company is globally diversified, the U.S. market remains the most important and fastest growing [...]