The DivGro Weekly—11.11.22

111 Consecutive dividend increases

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when Roper increased its dividend by 10.1%, its 30th consecutive annual dividend increase.

We also collected our quarterly dividends from Lowe's and Mastercard and will shortly receive our dividends from Pool Corp and Wingstop.

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 111 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies. The average rate of these dividend increases is 15.4%.

Wingstop, our rapidly expanding chicken wings franchisor will shortly cross the 2,000-unit milestone. Franchisee economics are industry leading, with around $400,000 in setup costs translating into annual profits exceeding $200,000 per year. With this profitability profile it is not surprising to see prospective franchisee candidates literally queuing up for the right to open additional units. A key ingredient behind Wingstop's successful recipe is the fact that a Wingstop is designed to operate with as few as 3-4 workers, meaning labour availability and cost is much less of a factor than currently experienced by most other formats, and is not constraining Wingstop's growth trajectory. With franchisee economics being a leading indicator for the success of a franchising system, Wingstop is excellently positioned to continue its turbocharged dividend growth, having increased its dividend at an average rate above 22% per year since initiating quarterly dividends in 2017 (while periodically paying significant bonus special dividends as well).