Dividends

2024 Dividend income

2024 Dividend Target is £4,500.00 or £375.00 per month

(Equivalent to $5,687.10 dollars or $473.93 per month)

Key dates for 2024 portfolio updates
  1. Q1 Dividend income published by Saturday 6th April 2024
  2. Full financial 2023/24 results published by Saturday 6th April
  3. Q2 Dividend (Half year) income update published by Saturday 6th July
  4. Q3 dividend income results published by Saturday 5th October
  5. Q4 Full Year dividend income results published by  Saturday 5th January 2025
Q2 Dividend Income

Half year Q2 has concluded resulting in a 8.41% year over year gain, increasing income to £2,177.98 verses £2,008.98 (2023 H1).

This has added an additional £169.00 over the first six months of 2024.

At the halfway mark I am reasonably pleased with the portfolios progress as we have the rest of the years’ income, plus regular savings and a current £1,000 cash balance to add further equities.

The current portfolio dividend yield is 4.50%

Projected dividend income for the full year is £4,436.37 or £369.70 per month. This should be achieved provided there are no further cuts or any new purchases (which there will be of course :-).

Please see the chart below:

New holdings in technology were taken during the quarter as the portfolio is underweight in both tech and international shares.

Fortunately a slight market drop in May enabled two new additions of MSFT and GOOGL, both of which managed to add to the first six months dividends.

Microsoft has been growing its dividend annually by 10% a year over the last five years, so can be classified as a dividend grower.

Microsoft is up by 9.49% since it was purchased and Alphabet is up by 2.09%. We also collected  the maiden Alphabet dividend as GOOGL is new to income stocks.

The aim of the portfolio as set out at the beginning of the year is to increase exposure to technology and increase international shares for diversification purposes.

Technology has increased from 8.2% to 11.4%

Please see below the updated portfolio weightings:

Here’s a snapshot of the portfolio’s top 20 holdings year to date.

The aim to is to eventually hold approximately 25 quality income producing stocks, so there is still a lot of work to do in both adding new equities and increasing existing holdings.  

Here’s a full breakdown of the first six month’s dividend income:

Finally, by adding regular monthly savings and reclaiming the Tax, then include the dividend income this portfolio is producing I am now able to add £550+ per month of equities.

Thats the power of compound interest, meaning that after just ten years I can grow the portfolio by £6,600 per year!

Personally, I like to build a cash balance then purchase the next trench of income producing shares carefully and consistently increasing the annual income.

Until the next quarter I’d like to wish you all a successful second half of 2024 & Happy investing!

Q1 Dividend income

Q1 2024 has concluded with a year over year quarterly dividend increase of 6.59% verses 2023.

There were only two purchases of equities in January 24 as we added to both:

  • Unilever (45 shares)
  • Diageo (50 shares)

Unilever did have a positive impact on dividend income during the quarter and should also add forward income onwards.

Diageo will have a forward effect on income in months April & October onwards.

Highlights for the quarter:

  1.  Shell’s overall dividends contributions to the portfolio exceeded £5,041.29 (This would have been higher if it was not for twice rebalancing the portfolio, taking profits (£4,500) and reducing shares last year to 500 from 700).
  2. Imperial Brands overall dividends contributions exceeded £3,531.44

I have provided a visual graph comparing Q1 YOY figures:

A chart comparing a breakdown by sector and their retrospective weightings can bee seen below:

As we can see the portfolio is very defensive and lacking exposure to the growth technology stocks.

The chart below demonstrates the portfolios geographical regions and weightings per equity:

The chart below provides a breakdown of UK equities verses investment trusts held within the portfolio:

The objective for 2024 is to add more technology stocks but due to the recent 2023 increases in valuations I am now waiting for suitable entry points where prices are a little more reasonable.

It is not a bad thing to increase cash and wait for a better entry point, as they say “Cash is KING” so a little patients is key.  

I have also decided to readjust lower the annual and monthly figures, as technology stocks tend to have lower dividend yields.

The portfolio is extremely conservative and defensive with higher weightings in consumer staples, financials and energy stocks, thus I have realised we are missing out on gains in tech stocks which is limiting the growth of the portfolio.

Increasing ADI and adding MSFT are ideally what I would like for 2024. 

Just by executing ADI & MSFT would increase international shares, bringing a better balance to the portfolio.

I would like to add Apple however there are a myriad of factors affecting my valuation where I would view purchasing Apple at these levels far too risky.

For now Happy & Successful investing until the second Q2 update!

Full Financial year 2023/24

Portfolio update for the full financial year 2023/24 has now been completed.

Year over year performance was good increasing the dividend income by £374.70, equating to a 9.66% increase.

I am pleased with the overall YOY performance even though I held back from adding monthly contributions and purchasing stocks towards the end of 2023 (for 5 months) as I needed to pay off the finance on the car. Vehicle now paid off and contributions restarted I aim to rebuild the cash buffer to increase holdings.

The monthly dividend income target of £350 so this has been verified by the end of year financials as it has increased to £354.42 ppm, so I am extremely pleased with the steady YOY income growth.

Please see the chart below demonstrating the year end steady YOY incremental gains:

A full breakdown of the dividend contributions has been displayed in the file below, allowing readers an in-depth visual to portfolio income:

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