The DivGro Weekly—21.03.25
189 Consecutive dividend increases
Weekly Dividend Progress
This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we received our quarterly dividends from Microsoft, Moody’s, Cintas and Alphabet, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.
How We Are Tracking
Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 189 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.61%.
Cintas
Few companies have the real-life makings of a Cinderella story — but Cintas does. Before it became a dominant leader in North America in the provision of uniform rental and sanitation, fire-safety and first-aid services, the company started from scrappier origins. In the Great Depression, Doc and Amelia Farmer, the original founders, began collecting and repurposing discarded rags for sale. Their operation expanded into laundry and later uniform rental. Fast-forward 90+ years and today Cintas serves more than one million businesses, including the healthcare, automotive and hospitality sectors, where clothing hygiene and safety are mission-critical. Why do they entrust their uniforms to Cintas? By virtue of its massive size, relative to smaller, fragmented competitors, as well as its continuous reinvestment into the business, Cintas trumps competitors who cannot match its price, reputation, reliability, timeliness or quality. The consequence? Cintas can bid for new business with equivalent or better offerings at cheaper prices, enabling it to gain market share easefully. History evidences these advantages at play: since its 1983 IPO, Cintas has lifted its dividend each year in excess of 18 per cent per annum compounded, driving a commensurately phenomenal price appreciation. Given there is an existent market of more than 16 million businesses who could benefit from its rental uniforms and services, the proverbial runway for Cintas’s wares — and accumulation of more clients — is potentially endless.