Life Partners Holdings (LPHI) Declares Special $0.25 Dividend

Life Partners Holdings, Inc. (LPHI) has authorized a special cash dividend payment of $0.25 cents per share to shareholders of record as of the close of business on October 15, 2010, to be paid on or about October 29, 2010. The ex-dividend date is October 27, 2010.... more

Dividends for Depression Era Investing, Part 3

Continuing our series (see Part 2 here) on investing for an income stream through companies who sell products people have to buy, even in a depression, I will today be covering companies that are growing their dividends. The best part about them is that they continued to grow their dividends, and had enough money to do so over the past decade while the overall stock market lost money. How is that possible? Their share prices dropped just like nearly every other stock out there. It is because their business remained solid as they sold products people have to buy, even though the owners of the shares were freaking out and selling without thinking. Oh yeah, and they meet our other requirement - they yield more than the 10 year Treasury Bond. As you are getting used to now, I like to give... more

Dividend Payers vs. Non-Payers, August Performance

Although the month of August saw the average return for the dividend payers in the S&P 500 Index trail the non-payers and the S&P 500 Index as a whole, on a YTD and 12-month basis, the payers continue to outperform. On a year to date basis, the average return of the payers equals -.62% versus -3.41% for the non payers. On an average return basis, the payers and non payers are outperforming the market cap weighted S&P 500 Index. The fact that the equal weighted returns are outperforming the market cap weighted returns continues to support the findings in the July 2010 report issued by Standard and Poor's. (click to enlarge)From The Blog of HORAN Capital AdvisorsSource: Standard & Poor's... more

7 Dividend Stocks Sending More Cash to Shareholders

If your goal is to accumulate wealth for a comfortable retirement, then there is no risk-free path. Throughout time every angle has been tried and failed. What appears to be a safe investment in a federally insured CD or money market, may not even be covering inflation. Growth stocks don’t always grow. The astute conservative investor turns to solid dividend paying stocks with a track record of growing their dividends each year.... more

Medtronic: Dividend Stock Analysis

Medtronic, Inc. (MDT) develops, manufactures, and sells device-based medical therapies worldwide. This dividend champion has raised distributions for 33 years in a row.Over the past decade this dividend stock has produced a negative total return of 2.20% per year. The company was grossly overvalued in 2000, ending the year at a P/E of 68 which explains the poor returns over the past decade.... more

Triangle Capital: Dividend Outlook Short Term and Long Term

We’ve just reviewed Triangle Capital’s (TCAP) 10-Q filing for the period ended June 30, 2010, listened to the company’s first ever Conference Call on August 5th, and looked over the Earnings Report again. All of this with a view to providing readers with our outlook for TCAP’s dividend. WHY THE DIVIDEND IS IMPORTANT: For most investors in BDCs, the dividend level is a key element in the buy or sell decision. That’s because the dividend is a useful proxy for earnings, as BDCs are required to distribute essentially all their taxable earnings (not including Unrealized Gains or Losses) in the form of distributions. [Like everything else in the Business Development Company arena, though, nothing is black and white. BDCs have a variety of dividend strategies: some pay out a... more

Banking on Bank Dividends? Just Look Outside the U.S.

We all know how the bank dividend story goes. Big money center banks based here in the U.S. and several of their large European counterparts got drunk off the easy money, easy credit cocktail that flowed so freely from 2005-2007. When banks like Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) finally sobered up in late 2008, their balance sheets reeked like drunken sailors and shareholders would soon pay the price with a harsh round of dividend cuts that left investors out in the cold. Prior to those dividend cuts, one of the primary reasons to invest in large-cap bank stocks was the dividends. Bank stocks in the S&P 500 were some of the best, most consistent dividend payers out there. Long story short, that's simply not the case anymore. Big banks,... more

4 Utility Stocks Getting Slammed

Contrarian investors should utilize times like this to differentiate between stocks that are dropping for fundamentally sound reasons -- and those stocks that are simply being dragged down because of general market concerns. Sure, there's plenty to worry about -- gigantic federal deficits, sovereign debt problems in Europe, an economic slowdown in China. But let's not forget that in the midst of all of this volatility lies the prospect to grab some great companies at dirt-cheap prices. In particular, I'm a huge fan of dividend stocks. Renowned Professor Jeremy Siegel has illustrated that from 1957 to 2003, when reinvesting dividends, the S&P's 100 highest-yielding stocks outperformed the market by an average of 3 percentage points. Over a long period of time, 3 percentage points can... more

Dividends Aren't Enough: Media Companies

I love cash. As an investor, nothing makes me happier than a company that returns money to shareholders, rather than spending it recklessly on a CEO's pet projects or an ill-fated acquisition. Historically, investors have often looked at a stock's dividend yield to identify these shareholder-friendly enterprises. But I prefer a slightly different metric -- one proven to further maximize investor returns. A 2007 study in The Journal of Finance suggests that investors should also factor net share repurchases into the equation, through a metric called the net payout ratio. According to the authors of the study, this ratio not only identifies companies that are paying back investors, but also predicts future equity returns better than the dividend yield.... more

Dividends Aren't Enough: Clinical Laboratories

I love cash. As an investor, nothing makes me happier than a company that returns money to shareholders, rather than spending it recklessly on a CEO's pet projects or an ill-fated acquisition. Historically, investors have often looked at a stock's dividend yield to identify these shareholder-friendly enterprises. But I prefer a slightly different metric -- one proven to further maximize investor returns. A 2007 study in The Journal of Finance suggests that investors should also factor net share repurchases into the equation, through a metric called the net payout ratio. According to the authors of the study, this ratio not only identifies companies that are paying back investors, but also predicts future equity returns better than the dividend yield.... more