The DivGro Weekly—29.10.21

81 Consecutive dividend increases

This week Visa increased its dividend by 17.2%. Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefitted from 81 consecutive dividend increases, at an average increase rate of 14.6% per dividend.

We also received our quarterly dividends from Watsco and Stryker.

Having started as a cooperative to allow swifter payments between competing banks, Visa quickly became much more powerful and valuable than the banks that set it up. As a shorthand test for assessing the value of a product or service, Warren Buffett asks how a customer would fare or feel without it. Research suggests more than half the world's population would suffer greatly without the ability to swipe/chip/tap their Visa (or Mastercard which we profiled previously). Thanks to its privileged position as effective toll-collector over the 206 billion annual transactions it processes, Visa has raised its dividend every year since its IPO in 2008 at a phenomenal average rate of 23% per year, powering a corresponding share price uplift of 16x.