The DivGro Weekly—23.08.24

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 dividend from Abbott. We also became entitled to our quarterly dividends from Wingstop, Poolcorp, MSCI, Moody’s and Cintas, 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%.

Abbott

For more than a century, Abbott, our 135-year-old giant of healthcare and medical devices, has paid uninterrupted dividends, growing these consecutively for the last 52 years and driving stellar stock market performance in parallel. What does this mean, in real life, for its adherents? No story encapsulates the incredible compounding potential from a growth dividend like Abbott better than the near-folkloric experience of Grace Groner. Groner’s first — and only — job was with Abbott, where she landed her role as a receptionist in 1931. Her formative years at the company led to two key insights: first, she recognised that Abbott continued to pay out its dividend throughout the Great Depression and second, that despite the economic downturn, the company’s sales continued to grow. So, in 1935, she bought three shares of Abbott for a total of $180. Groner held her Abbott shares devoutly for around 75 years, ultimately gifting her $7 million stake to her alma mater before she died. Her conviction in the future of the company remains true to its approach today. While Abbott fiercely protects its leading market shares across existing products, it also repositions from time to time to ensure exposure to faster-growing segments in order to safeguard the continued development of its outstanding dividend growth credentials.