It’s time to do my first ever monthly review. I use these reviews to reflect on the past month, go through how I’ve allocated my monthly contributions to observe how my portfolio’s dividend income has evolved. These reviews are also a great way for you, my dear reader, to follow up my quest and also comment on it. After all, the interaction in reviews is the most beneficial part.
Code review is one of the most effective ways to improve software quality.
– Procedure where another person reads and provides feedback on other programmers code
Tabula rasa - and first splashes of paint
I look up highly for others who have been successful in dividend growth investing. When I started investing a few years ago, I was really interested in dividends. But then pivoted to growth stocks. Then I stumbled upon awesome Dividend Talk podcast, and I realized, “What on Earth am I doing?”. I should be raking up dividends like I intended to do in the first place.
And I’m going to share one of @European_DGI and Derek’s sayings:
You can’t borrow conviction.
– European DGI and Derek literally every episode
Looking up to these guys, what did I end up doing? Well, of course I borrowed conviction!
When starting out, maybe others can help you
Why did I end up doing the exact opposite of what I was told to do? It’s quite simple, I’m a newbie and I can’t really make in depth analysis straight away. So I listened to what others are doing, tried to understand their reasoning behind their choices, and performed my own sanity checks using screeners to see if they seemed okay. However, it’s quite important to choose who you listen to. I would stay away from very vocal people waving piles of cash in videos. For some reason, I don’t trust people who tweet about 20-60 times per day. I mean, don’t they do anything productive with their days?
Oh well, let’s actually go to the stocks I bought.
Stonks - I mean stocks
*Drum roll*. Here are the stocks I bought in September 2023:
| Date | Company | Ticker | # Shares | Price per Share | Total Price | Total Price (€) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Sep 2023 | Realty Income | O | 1 | $55.81 | $55.81 | 59.72€ |
| 5 Sep 2023 | Lemonade | LMND | 5 | $14.12 | $70.60 | 75.54€ |
| 7 Sep 2023 | Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize | AD | 4 | 29.04€ | 116.16€ | 116.16€ |
| 11 Sep 2023 | VICI Properties | VICI | 7 | $31.26 | $218.82 | 234.23€ |
| 12 Sep 2023 | ASR Nederland | ASRNL | 10 | 40.30€ | 403.00€ | 403.00€ |
| 15 Sep 2023 | Lemonade | LMND | 13 | $12.70 | $165.10 | 176.66€ |
| 15 Sep 2023 | VICI Properties | VICI | 7 | $31.40 | $219.80 | 235.28€ |
| 15 Sep 2023 | Realty Income | O | 7 | $54.30 | $380.10 | 406.71€ |
| 19 Sep 2023 | Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize | AD | 10 | 29.12€ | 291.20€ | 291.20€ |
| Total | 1998.50€ |
Realty Income - $O
“The Monthly Dividend Company®” (ref)
For those who don’t know, Realty Income is a real estate investment trust (REIT) that invests in commercial real estate. They are well diversified with convenience stores being their number one industry (11.1%), grocery stores second (9.9%), dollar stores third (7.1%). And then 7 other industries from home improvement to drug stores to restaurants and health & fitness. (See the full listing here)
They have a long history of paying dividends. Indeed, so long that they have the dividend aristocrat status meaning they have increased their dividends for 25+ years. They have paid dividends for 639 consecutive months and during that time increased the dividends 122 times since 1994. That is impressive.
And then when we factor in the current debt rates, the stock price has gone down. The stock offers around 5% yield. This will be a long hold for me. Yum!
VICI Properties - $VICI
Invest in the EXPERIENCE (ref)
When I first heard of VICI and “gaming real estate”, I thought of eSports. But the gaming in VICI’s properties is bit different. VICI Properties is a REIT that invests in hospitality and entertainment destinations revolving around gambling. And what could be better place for that than Las Vegas?
They own 54 gaming facilities with 450+ restaurants, bars, clubs and sportsbooks. From what I have heard, that’s like half of all Vegas. I have never been that interested in Vegas, but I have came to the conclusion that some people just love that place. So why wouldn’t I rake up some dividends from there. Gambling is something that is done in recession as well, right? I think I’ll be mostly safe with this one.
Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize - $AD
“Eat well. Save time. Live better.” (ref)
Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize is a Dutch retail company operating in the United States, Europe and Indonesia. They have around 7600 stores in 10 countries with 60 million shoppers each week. But I have to admit, that’s most that I know.
This stock, however, should be quite safe if recession happens. We all need to eat, right? And when there’s shortage of money, we’ll probably skip the restaurant and cook more at home.
I have also heard that the management is quite good. They don’t set unreachable goals. Rather, they set achiavable goals and then beat them. This makes me believe that the dividend will keep on comming in the future as well.
ASR Nederland - $ASRNL
ASR Nederland is an insurance company operating in the Netherlands. That is almost everything I know about them (and I feel bad for admiting that). And I will be dig deeper in the future. But they came up as a solid dividend payer and I decided to buy some.
And this is the most painfull so far. On the 26th of September, fellow Dutch insurance company NN Group faced new updates on litigation, in which they are probably facing major compensations for their customers. NN Group disagrees with the judgement and will file an appeal to Dutch Supreme Court. But the same litigation is connected to company called Aegon NV, which sold their Dutch business to ASR…and therefore the same judgement is related to ASR. In reaction, ASR price dropped about -15% in one day. Ooof.
Lemonade - $LMND
“Forget Everything You Know About Insurance” (ref)
Okay, you might think why is this here? It’s certainly not a dividend stock. This will go to my “random growth stocks” portion of the portfolio. I will limit the amount of shares in this category to low amount, probably to <10%, in the long run.
Lemonade sparked my interest with its odd name. And you can’t really guess by the name that it’s an insurance company. They seem to be a nice looking fintech company. By judging from their website they have many great features. Like ability to get the claims handled and paid in seconds.
It’s high risk play. Currently they aren’t profitable and are basically learning how to price the insurance premiums. But I believe they can take advantage of machine learning and AI. And due to their smaller size they might be able to react to things faster compared with the big players.
Basically, for investments in this category, I’m looking for short-term (3-24 months instead of +5 years) gains that I can then invest into proper dividend stocks.
Portfolio after September 2023
And here is the portfolio at the end of September 2023:
| Company | Share Count | Purchase Value | Current Value | Change in Value | % of Full Portfolio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize | 14 | 407.36€ | 399.28€ | -8.08€ (-1.98%) | 23.27% |
| VICI Properties | 14 | 469.51€ | 385.32€ | -84.19€ (-17.94%) | 22.46% |
| Realty Income | 8 | 456.16€ | 377.87€ | -78.29€ (-17.16%) | 22.04% |
| ASR Nederland | 10 | 403.00€ | 355.20€ | -47.80€ (-11.86%) | 20.72% |
| Lemonade | 18 | 252.20€ | 197.82€ | -54.38€ (-21.57%) | 11.52% |
| Total | 64 | 1988.23€ | 1715.49€ | -272.74€ (-13.72%) | 100.00% |
At the end of September 2023, the portfolio is worth 1715.49€. That is -13.7% compared to the purchase value. The portfolio is now in the red, but that only means I can buy more of those stocks cheaper! Trying to learn this new mindset better.
If you wish to give me comment’s on this article, please tweet me at @DividendGrowthQ. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
With much love, Dividend Growth Quest
* Please note, the content of this blog is for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. I am sharing my journey into dividend growth investing; I am not a financial specialist. I cannot guarantee the validity of the data presented. Do not take any action based solely on what you read.