The DivGro Weekly—16.08.24

166 Consecutive dividend increases

Weekly Dividend Progress

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from Mastercard and Texas Instruments. We also became entitled to our quarterly dividend from Microsoft, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.

How We Are Tracking

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 166 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.83%.

Mastercard

Established in 1958 as a cooperative among banks, Mastercard has multiplied its dividend more than 70x since its 2006 IPO. Mastercard’s ability to generate a stellar return above 50 per cent per annum on the capital invested in the company evidences its rare set of privileges. How so? Given its duopoly with Visa (another long-term DivGro holding), both companies are able to extract a small toll on the gross value of every single transaction they facilitate — and Mastercard’s share exceeds 100 billion transactions per year. As these companies process ever-growing numbers of transactions, they significantly impede smaller competitors from gaining traction, reinforcing a proverbial wall that becomes increasingly harder to climb. Plus, given the ubiquity of digital payments, more Mastercards are being issued and used than ever before, providing the company with a strong secular tailwind for growth likely to enhance its already powerful dividend record.