Dividend Investing With a 10/10 Rule - Dividend Earner

I was watching the interview of Tom Cameron on Business News Network this past week where he highlighted the 10/10 rule utilized by his investment firms. It is very pertinent to dividend investors since it’s all about the dividend growth. In fact, 10/10 stands for a company that increases dividends for 10 consecutive years with an average of 10% or more growth in dividends per year.

10/10 Strategy

It’s a simple screening test really. You can follow this process of elimination.

1. Identify companies that have paid dividends for the past 10 years.
2. Identify the companies that have increased their dividends by an average of 10% per year for 10 years.

Rather than focusing on the yield, it focuses on the dividend growth to accelerate compound growth. A consistent growing dividend under a DRIP could double your holdings in a good time frame. Patience is quite important here as the growth in yield over many years is what you bank on to increase your holdings. What is interesting is that a dividend aristocrat may not pass the criteria here even if they increase dividends for 25 consecutive years. The combination of both should provide a really solid investment though.

Top Holdings

Although historical data are available to filter stocks, it’s not always easy to filter on it without putting the data together yourself. Especially when you need to look at historical data. The fund highlights their performance and top holdings on their site but I thought I’d share the holdings here with some extra information. It does in fact keep up with the S&P 500 index, my fellow blogger Andrew Hallam might be impressed Ticker  Co                           Stk Pr    DivYld 10yr Gr  Con Div Inc NVO  Novo-Nordisk A/S $124.42 1.52%    23.5%     14 TEVA TEVA Pharm         $50.00   1.64%    29.7%     10 ADM ArcherDanielsMid  $31.11   2.06%    12.6%     36 IBM  Int’l Bus Machines $166.56  1.80%   17.8%      15 WAG Walgreen                $43.32   1.62%    16.1%      35 NSRGY Nestlé SA           $63.59       -            14%       14 CAH Cardinal Health       $44.51   1.93%    27.6%      14 MCD McDonald’s Corp  $80.98    3.01%    28.3%      34 NVS Novartis                   $63.48    3.72%    10.6%     16 PX Praxair, Inc.              $103.39     1.93%    19.6%    18

 

Thoughts

I went back and looked at the stocks I reviewed in the past months and only one matches the 10/10 criteria: Enbridge (ENB). Power Corp (POW), Power Financial (PWF) and Great-West LifeCo (GWO) each had 8 years of consecutive double digit growth and then lower growth for the last couple of years with no increase in dividends for 2010. A similar faith for the banks. The lack of dividend increase in 2010 basically fails the criteria and takes the companies out of the selection for another 10 years. I still consider them solid companies as you would see from my stock analysis and a reason that following a rigid rule may not always be best but it can sure simplify the process and eliminate emotions. Readers: What do you think of the filtering criteria? Disclaimer: Long ENB.
Dividend Investing With a 10/10 Rule - Dividend Earner