The DivGro Weekly—10.02.23

122 Consecutive dividend increases

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when FirstService raised its quarterly dividend by 11.1%, and we received our quarterly dividends from American Tower and Lowe's.

Having marked our calendars, we look forward to shortly receiving our quarterly dividends from MarketAxess and Costco.

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 122 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies. The average rate of these dividend increases is 15%.

Costco, our unrivalled customer advocate, acts as an effective agent for its 121 million subscribers on whose behalf it leans aggressively on best of breed suppliers to deliver the best products at the sharpest prices. Interestingly, just this week, in an innovative effort to bring down the cost of living in Israel (presently one of the highest amongst OECD countries), Israel's finance minister publicly reached out to Costco encouraging them to please enter the Israeli market. The specific intention in his letter is that Costco's price leadership would directly reduce the cost of living in Israel since food costs affect every household. Costco's fixation on customer advocacy endears members globally, underpinning its ability to raise its dividend every year since 2004 at an average rate above 13% per year, while periodically paying substantial special dividends as well.