Quarterly Reports and Dividend Increases in May, 2024

 

In May, It's been a fairly positive month so far with the TSX in Canada while investors and companies await a possible interest rate reduction, perhaps in June.

Quarterly reports with the stocks I own have also been good except BCE, where the CEO mentioned BCE is going in the right direction and expects it to improve by year's end. Time will tell. I'll hold on to it in the meantime. The expectations were 5% dividend increases but the last being 3.1% has some concerned and others have already sold. 

I like this post by Henry Mah on Your Ever Growing Income down below his April Wealthsimple Investment Update about BCE.

In the that highly competitive Canadian telecom sector with the top dogs... Telus (T) added over 200,000 more customers and increased it's quarterly dividend.

Quarterly dividend raised to $0.3891, an increase of 7.0 per cent over the same period last year and our twenty-sixth increase since May 2011, representing a yield of approximately 7.0 per cent; Leading dividend growth program supported by Adjusted EBITDA growth outlook and strong annual free cash flow expansion

Out in western Canada, the oil and natural gas scene is upbeat these days with billions being spent to upgrade and grow their infrastructures while I added to my Enbridge holding (ENB) after reading the company didn't see any change in it's pipeline flows so far with the Trans Mountain Pipeline startup. Initially expected to take some business away from ENB.

In the last half of May 2024, two of my stocks in the Lifeco sector will have ex-dividend dates with Sunlife having different branches of it's company reporting up and down results in the first quarter of 2024 with Asia on the positive side and raised it's quarterly dividend.

Great-West Life (GWO) had a decent quarterly report with record base earnings and has an ex-dividend date of May 30th.

                                         Courtesy Seeking Alpha and Baris-Ozer

I'm a subscriber to The Globe and Mail mainly for it's Investing section but it's packed with news, sports, etc. There are daily articles from different views, approaches and plans for building portfolios and sizing up individual stocks, ETFs. Just like the various Blogs I read. 

Above all, It's about individual choices and building at an investment pace one is comfortable with while still enjoying the things we like to buy or do that costs money.

In the Globe and Mail, I like looking over John Heinzl's Yield Hog Portfolio which is updated monthly since he started it in Oct, 2017. 21 holdings with companies like Enbridge, Emera, Fortis, etc. that I own.

There are two ETF's from Blackrock included and the first ETF to launch in 1990 is the iShares S&P/TSX 60 index ... XIU with a 2nd highest gain in his portfolio of 35.2% based on April where distributions have been reinvested since the initial purchase such as DRGO-A below and calculated by comparing current market value to the starting portfolio value.

The highest gain since 2019 is the US ETF; DGRO-A, iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF with 73.27%. DGRO-A contains US holdings

Impressive ... however, like Vanguard ETF's for the most part, the distributions vary from month to month, quarter to quarter. In comparison to a stock like Fortis, FTS which has been growing it's dividend payout to share holders for 50 years with no fees that come with ETFs although the two mentioned above have very low management fees.

 

 

Earning Reports in May of 2024

 

May, 2024 will be an interesting month while the NHL playoffs are underway with some Canadian teams having the potential to win their series and get past the first round.

Quarterly earning reports will be coming out as well for some of my stocks in May although these are short term 3 month reports while I look long term. 

However, where my focus is the dividend, it's wise to keep track of companies that have lowered their dividend growth due to several factors such as higher debt and lingering high interest loans, competition, government oversight, etc.

The telecom that's been in the investing news since it's last earnings report, BCE which reports earnings on May 2nd, will have a lot of scrutiny to see if their recent cuts to lower expenses and operational costs has improved. Probably take the rest of 2024 to see any positive results, if any.

All that data and number crunching comes down to analyst's single line quotes with their estimates and did the earnings report miss, meet or exceed their expectations. Investors can then dig into more analyst numbers for a company but I don't bother with that where it's just that ... estimates.

With energy and the moving of oil and natural gas where Canada is ramping up exports this year, Enbridge or ENB reports on May 10th and has an ex-dividend date of May 14th. ENB's current yield is 7.48% and has moved up from it's 52 week low of $42.75.

What they call a boring stock but a good foundation stock is the "powerhouse" utility, Fortis or FTS with companies under it's holdings umbrella all over North America and beyond. FTS reports earnings on May 1st and has an ex-dividend date of May 16th with a current yield of 4.42%.

Courtesy of The Motley Fool and Getty Images

The top banks in Canada begin reporting earnings during the 2nd half of May with the Bank of Montreal, BMO being the laggard in the last earning report ending 2023.