The DivGro Weekly—26.04.24

161 Consecutive dividend increases

Weekly Dividend Progress

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividend from Roper Technologies and became entitled to our dividends from Lowe’s, Costco and L’Oréal, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.

How We Are Tracking

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 161 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.9%.

L’Oréal

In the hard-fought and oft-limited real estate of beauty shelves, L’Oréal dominates pride of place, transcending competitors with its industry-leading gross margins of nearly 75 per cent. Blessed with such profitability — and the distinctly Parisienne allure of joie de youth that magnetises customers to the brand — L’Oréal is spoiled for choice with its myriad options to cultivate growth. How so? The company is able to apply ‘brute force’ in advertising (for example: employing industry heavyweight Kendall Jenner as global ambassador) in order to foster loyalty among existing customers while appealing to the next generation. Moves like these solidify L’Oréal’s position as fourth largest advertiser across any company, across any industry worldwide, but its impact is even more diverse and widespread. While optics are important, L’Oréal is equally keyed into its psychographics. Alongside growing demand from eco-conscious customers for ‘clean beauty’, L’Oréal has established itself as an exemplary environmental leader, beating out 21,000 companies to earn the best possible rating by CDP — a triple A — for the eighth year in a row, for the investments it has committed to addressing climate change, forest protection and water security. The net result? L’Oréal continues to strengthen its image and credentials simultaneously; while amplifying customers who identify with its ethos and tethering them to the brand, the company augments its leadership status, growing faster than the category and enhancing its outstanding dividend legacy.