The DivGro Weekly—29.11.24

173 Consecutive dividend increases

Weekly Dividend Progress

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from MSCI and Poolcorp. We also became entitled to our quarterly dividends from Moody’s, Microsoft, S&P Global and Home Depot, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.

How We Are Tracking

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 173 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.65%.

MSCI

MSCI — the company behind the benchmark MSCI World Index and preeminent compiler of indices outside the US — is an exemplar of the potential outperformance generated by spinoffs. In 2007, MSCI was spun out of Morgan Stanley. Since then, it has created an enviable dividend track record, with more than 800 per cent growth since its maiden 2014 dividend. This has powered a parallel stock outperformance, vastly exceeding that of its erstwhile parent. But how? MSCI benefits from a virtuous cycle: when other major institutional asset managers establish products that either look to replicate or benchmark against MSCI’s indices, they effectively endorse them, enhancing MSCI’s reputation and product ubiquity and essentially advertising to others to follow suit. These products, of course, are most welcome. While others are doing its heavy lifting, MSCI earns a royalty-type income from these customers. Plus, the longer these products exist, MSCI’s index revenues become increasingly rock-solid given customers are discouraged from undermining the performance records of their own products. That MSCI is adept at bringing further indices and adjacent software products to market only broadens its catchment area and potential royalty streams, ballasting the likelihood of a long extension of its superb dividend growth.