The DivGro Weekly—07.06.24
163 Consecutive dividend increases
Weekly Dividend Progress
This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when Lowe’s increased its dividend by 4.6%, notably representing a cumulative dividend increase of 109% since DivGro’s initial purchase in 2019. We also 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 163 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.8%.
Visa
Visa, which developed as a cooperative to enable faster payments between competing banks in the 1950s, has established a phenomenal dividend growth record in excess of 20 per cent per annum compounded since its 2008 IPO. On the heels of that outstanding performance, the company recently announced a key milestone: the issuance of its tenth billionth token since the launch of its token technology in 2014. So, how does it work? Visa’s token technology, which can be embedded within multiple devices at once, troubleshoots for several pain points within the payment process. For example: the tokens conceal personal identity and sensitive payment details, securing digital payments while rendering them virtually useless to scammers. How useless? In a herculean feat, Visa’s technology saved more than $650 million in fraud in 2023 alone, arming merchants and consumers with an arguably priceless edge: peace of mind. In the decade since launch, already nearly 30 per cent of Visa’s 276 billion annual transactions utilise tokenisation, reflecting that the technology has been readily welcomed by users. Simultaneously, it presents substantial runway for additional uptake in the future, lighting the path for Visa to continue to dominate its apex position in the global payments system and accordingly to advance its dividend trajectory.
