The DivGro Weekly—08.08.25

196 Consecutive dividend increases

Weekly Dividend Progress

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we collected our quarterly dividends from Stryker, Watsco and Lowe’s, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.

How We Are Tracking

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 196 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.4%.

Stryker

All companies aim to attract top talent, but Stryker has developed an edge to attract the best of breed. How so? For more than 80 years, the medtech leader has optimised its sales and distribution force par excellence, magnetising the most ambitious and aspirational graduates entering the field to a career at Stryker. This reputational self-selection enables the company to cherry-pick the best potential new employees at low cost, while perpetuating a virtuous cycle that hinders competitors from denting Stryker’s hiring edge. This unique differentiation, coupled with Stryker’s innovative and fast-growing Mako robotics division — which benefits increasingly from an ageing yet active population — bodes extremely well for the tremendous productivity of Stryker’s sales and distribution force, and in turn, the extension of its dividend growth record, which has compounded at an impressive 16% per annum since initiation in 1993.