Air Products and Chemicals: Dividend Stock Analysis

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. offers atmospheric gases, process and specialty gases, performance materials, and equipment and services worldwide. The company is member of the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P Dividend Aristocrats indexes. Air Products and Chemicals has paid uninterrupted dividends on its common stock since 1954 and increased payments to common shareholders every year for 28 years.Over the past decade this dividend stock has delivered an average total return of 11.80% to its shareholders.The company has managed to deliver a 20.20% average annual increase in its EPS over the past decade, largely due to low earnings in 2000. Analysts are expecting an increase in EPS to $4.98 for 2010 and $5.63 by 2011. This would be a nice increase from the 2009 earnings per... more

6 Dividend Stocks Working When You're Not

This past week I have been vacationing more than 1,500 miles from my home. As with most vacations, I have not done much work this week. However, a quick check of my brokerage account shows that my dividend stocks have been very busy this week. It is nice to know my income portfolio never takes a day off. What’s even better is the portfolio is frequently getting a raise through higher cash dividend payments.... more

Four Stocks Going Ex-Dividend Fourth Week of June

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends'. This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend. This technique generally works only in bull markets. In flat or choppy markets, your have to be extremely careful. In order to be entitled to the dividend, you have to buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, and you can't sell the stock until after the ex date. The actual dividend may not be paid for another few weeks. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has compiled a downloadable and sortable Excel list of the stocks going ex dividend during the next week or two. The list contains many dividend paying companies, all with market caps... more

5 Dividend Stocks for Former BP Investors

Dividend investors have been dumping their BP stock for weeks now, given concerns that the dividend would be axed. Yesterday, BP (BP) officially suspended their dividend, confirming investor fears. Now ex-BP investors are looking for quality stocks to replace their lost dividend yields.Of course investors aren’t expecting to find stocks offering a 10.5% dividend yield like BP had until yesterday, but replacing BP’s dividend yield is not an easy task either. Consider BP stock before the Gulf rig explosion on April 20:... more

The Top 5 Foreign Dividend Paying Stocks for 2010

In our previous article, “The Top 5 U.S. Dividend Paying Stocks for 2010”, we identified the five U.S. dividend stocks which are projected to make the largest cash dividend payouts to shareholders in 2010. This elite group included 2 Energy stocks, 2 Healthcare stocks, and a Telecom stock. The top 5 foreign dividend paying stocks that we’ve identified include a Spanish bank, a Chinese telecom, and 3 energy companies, from the U.K., Holland, and France. It turns out that 2 of these foreign Energy stocks are actually projected to pay out more cash dividends than any of the U.S. stocks. All 5 of these foreign dividend stocks trade in the U.S. on the NYSE.... more

Ten Quick Facts About Dividends for the S&P 500

Dividends are alive and well and getting back to normal. At least that is what the data for the first six months of the year would indicate. The following is a brief update on the dividend actions or inactions of the 500 companies in the Standard and Poors Index for calendar year 2010.
This information is based on announced dividend actions as reported by Bloomberg and is taken from Bloomberg Professional Data. ... more

Top Five Quality Dividend Paying Companies

There comes a time when you realize that Fast Money is not always the Best Money especially if you survived the carnage of 2008/2009. With all the volatility presently in the markets - 200 points up, 200 points down on the DJIA and then 200 points up again - when do you buy and when do you sell? For a trader it is challenging enough, but for an investor what can you do? I asked myself these questions: 1. Which companies survived relatively well in the last 3 years with good profit margins, reasonable levels of debt, ROA, ROE, and pay dividends? 2. What volatility did these companies experience in their share price over the last 52 weeks? 3. What sort of returns could I potentially gain holding these companies medium to long term?... more

BP Investments and the Role of Ethics and Risk Management

The current situation with BP (BP) raises a bevy of thorny questions, not the least of which is how pensions and other types of institutional investors should deal with the asset allocation fallout.Let's start with the facts about institutional ownership of BP. According to Yahoo Finance and as excerpted in the table below, over 1,000 institutions owned stock in BP as of late March 2010. A relatively high dividend payout rate and dividend yield likely held great appeal for organizations seeking stability.... more

Jos. A Bank's New Dividend Move

Joe Banks (JOSB) announced today a 50% stock dividend. In other words, that's a three-for-stock stock split. If you own 200 shares, you'll get another 100 and you can expect the share price to drop by 33% (yes, a 50% increase followed by a 33% drop brings you back to where you started). Ultimately, a stock split doesn't mean anything to shareholder value. Companies say they do it to increase liquidity but that didn't hold back Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) for many years. In reality, these are nice press releases companies like to put out throughout the year, and JOSB has done well.... more

Should Dividend Investors Chase High Yields?

Many novice investors get into the world of dividend investing because of the belief that it is possible to generate double digit current yields. They purchase these securities in pursuit of current income, only to see these distributions cut after a few months. The truth is that few companies can afford to pay high dividends, unless they are pass-through entities such as master limited partnerships or real estate investment trusts to name a few.I have highlighted the top 20 yielding stocks in the S&P 500 index below:... more