The DivGro Weekly—06.12.24
173 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 Visa and Zoetis and became entitled to our quarterly dividend from Nike, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.
How We Are Tracking
Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 173 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.65%.
Visa
What’s in a name? Mention Visa and the ubiquity of its name alone evidences the company’s synonymy with — and market dominance across — payment processing, familiar to any layman. In fact, Visa is so embedded within the fabric of the global population that a significant portion of the world would be unable to function without their ability to receive or transact payments via the Visa system. In essence, Visa (together with DivGro sister holding Mastercard), is the lifeblood of global commerce. How did that eventuate? In 1958, Visa was established by a syndicate of banks to simplify transacting. Today, the company is on track to facilitate 300 billion transactions per year — completed within seconds and with exceedingly high accuracy (i.e. the acceptance of legitimate transactions and denial of fraudulent ones). This is thanks to its highly sophisticated infrastructure, which links consumers, merchants and banks — and which becomes increasingly harder for competitors to replicate with the passing of time. Indeed, instead of competing with Visa directly, aspirants usually choose to partner with or build their applications by leveraging its systems. Visa’s infrastructure and data trove, developed over more than 60 years, enable the company to execute unparalleled real-time decision ability. This privilege has resulted in stellar dividend growth; since its 2008 IPO, Visa’s dividends have grown each year at a compounded rate of around 20 per cent, contributing to a superlative stock price appreciation.