The DivGro Weekly—11.08.23

135 Consecutive dividend increases

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from Lowe's and Mastercard, and became entitled to our quarterly dividends from Visa, MSCI and Poolcorp, all higher than this time last year.

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 135 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies. The average rate of these dividend increases is 15.4%.

Poolcorp is a remarkable success story, having begun 42 years ago as a two-man operation and developing into the dominant global distribution conduit for pool supplies and equipment. Poolcorp's privilege today stems largely from its over 30% market share in North America versus mainly small and highly fragmented competitors, enabling it to leverage its scale advantage to offer broader inventory, lower prices, more convenient locations, faster delivery and superior service. These advantages provide Poolcorp the ability to easily expand and conquer additional geographies, generally taking the #1 position on arrival into its chosen new market. While the industry may seem like an obscure niche, it benefits significantly from the fact that once built, pools require maintenance 'forever', offering Poolcorp's maintenance-oriented division annuity-like visibility. The confluence of these advantages has translated into Poolcorp's enviable dividend growth record, having grown around 20% per year since its maiden 2004 dividend, underpinning an equally exceptional share price performance.