The DivGro Weekly—07.04.23

130 Consecutive dividend increases

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from Nike, 11.5% higher than this time last year.

Having marked our calendars, we look forward to receiving our dividends from Evolution, FirstService, Mastercard and Roper shortly.

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 130 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies. The average rate of these dividend increases is 15.5%.

Nike, our dominant footwear and apparel leader, is celebrating the 23rd anniversary (the 'Jordan Anniversary' matching his player number) - since launching the Jordan Brand. Riding the tailwinds of the increasing popularity of basketball, Michael Jordan's enduring universal iconic popularity, and its unmatched marketing prowess, Nike has achieved the rare feat of developing a sister brand from scratch into an independent juggernaut. Not only is the Jordan Brand now en route to become the #2 footwear brand in North America, it is so highly sought after that select new releases command huge numbers of devoted queueing fans in the expectation that these often become much more highly valued collectables. This phenomenon enables the Jordan Brand to enjoy premium pricing providing Nike the opportunity to build a parallel high margin, high growth business. With incredible momentum in the Jordan Brand, Nike is especially well positioned to extend upon its already impressive 21-year record of rapid dividend increases.