percentage growth

Below is a list of all the stocks in our portfolio and their respective increases and or decreases in dividend payments from 2020 to 2021.  We now have 45 stocks in our portfolio which is an increase of 6 from the 39 we had at the start of 2021. Out of these 45 stocks currently in our portfolio: (1) currently pays no dividend; (0) stocks saw a dividend cuts; (5) stocks did not increase their dividends; (1) resumed payments after suspending them in 2020; and (38) stocks did increase their dividend.

As compared to 2020 this was a nice bounce back from the cuts, and suspensions we saw at the start of the pandemic. Some of the numbers are a bit misleading as most of the larger increases like from AEG, SPG, FL, LEA are rebounds from prior cuts. Others though are real like VALE’s 500% increase (though likely a one off due to the pandemic).  However, if we try to exclude of these skewed percentages that are more related to the pandemic then our solid winner for this year is AFL who increased their dividend 21.21% just beating out TROW (2020s winner with 18.4%) who topped their own 2020 increase at 20% in 2021.

Further, some that increased their dividends added a significant amount to the total dividends for the year. In particular was VALE’s dividend payments which ALONE equaled more than our entire 2020 total.  Yes that’s not a typo – VALE paid out over $3,600.00 in dividends which put its yield over 20%. This was a side effect of the pandemic and the supply chain issues running the price of iron ore nearly 2x from the lows at the start of the pandemic. The price of ore has since halved so we don’t believe 2022’s dividends from VALE will be anything close to its record 2021 but so goes the ride when you invest in commodities. Lastly, we feel like we repeat this at the end of every year but VALE is a significant percentage of our portfolio both in market value and dividend income. And while we’ve made slow progress in the market value; we have brought it down from over 20% to under 15% (but we’d like to get it around 10% or less), in dividend income it again accounts for nearly 50%. We will take it when we can get it but we don’t want to be a one hit wonder and will continue to diversify out as we’d like no one stock to account for more than 10%-15% of our total yearly income.

For 2022 we hope the pandemic will continue to ease and the increases will continue.

2021 DIVIDEND INCREASES IN PORTFOLIO STOCKS