The DivGro Weekly—24.03.23

130 Consecutive dividend increases

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from Moody's, Home Depot and SBA Communications, all significantly higher than this time last year.

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 130 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies. The average rate of these dividend increases is 15.5%.

Moody's, together with S&P Global (another DivGro holding), benefit from their stranglehold over global debt issuance. Moody's enjoys substantial privilege accrued over more than a century of accumulating trust in the integrity of its judgment and risk assessment capabilities. As financial markets develop, new areas requiring similarly trusted analysis and decision support emerge providing Moody's the opportunity to leverage its advantaged status into areas where its heritage affords an unfair head start. These nascent but fast-growing areas such as climate standard adherence, financial disclosure compliance, and cybersecurity ratings exemplify natural growth areas for Moody's to leverage its reputational privilege. With trust often seen as a function of time, it is a huge hurdle for aspiring competitors to compete with Moody's (and S&P Global) on an equal footing. When combined with its effective toll collection over debt issuance, these emerging opportunities provide Moody's a significant runway to extend its dividend growth trajectory, having increased its dividend by 770% since 2010.