The DivGro Weekly—05.05.23

131 Consecutive dividend increases

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from American Tower, Hermès, Stryker and Watsco, all significantly higher than this time last year.

Having marked our calendar we look forward to shortly receiving our dividend from Costco, also materially higher than this this time last year.

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 131 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies. The average rate of these dividend increases is 15.5%.

Stryker, our medical technology leader which traces its roots to 1941 is benefitting from a resurgence in demand for surgical procedures which could be delayed temporarily (due to covid) but not indefinitely. Stryker has been able to outpace competitors for decades through its relentless focus on continuous improvement in sales and distribution productivity, irrespective of market conditions. This compounding edge has driven Stryker's astounding sales growth - having grown sales by 100x from $100m in 1985 to over $10b by 2016 (now over $18b). Since initiating its dividend in 1993 this remarkable sales performance has underpinned Stryker's ability to grow its dividend in tandem, rising itself by 16% per year, in turn powering an equally compelling share price performance.