The DivGro Weekly—18.08.23

135 Consecutive dividend increases

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from Abbott Labs, MarketAxess and Texas Instruments, and became entitled to our quarterly dividends from Cintas, Microsoft and Wingstop, 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%.

Abbott, our 135-year medical devices and healthcare titan, has remarkably paid uninterrupted quarterly dividends for 99 years. In order to further extend its leadership positions in glucose monitoring systems and nutritional formula, Abbott has joined forces with esteemed football club Real Madrid, building a first of its kind lab inside Real's first team facilities. This unique collaboration seeks to enhance player performance through optimized nutrition and recovery protocols, and which insights should enhance Abbott's nutrition and glucose monitoring expertise. More broadly, with Real Madrid's 600m global fan base, this partnership aims to promote nutrition education and combat malnutrition, showcasing Abbott's long-standing commitment to help solve significant healthcare and nutritional challenges. The combination of its leadership positions in important health markets and willingness to invest creatively behind new opportunities has underpinned Abbott's superb 51-year record of annually rising dividends and provides an extensive runway for this to continue.