The DivGro Weekly—23.05.25

192 Consecutive dividend increases

Weekly Dividend Progress

This week we received further real-time, tangible evidence of outstanding business progress when we received our quarterly dividends from Costco and Abbott. We also became entitled to our quarterly dividends from Cintas, Moody’s, MSCI, Microsoft, Poolcorp and Wingstop, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.

How We Are Tracking

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 192 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.5%.

Wingstop

What beats wings? Beginning with a small wings-focused restaurant in Texas 30 years ago, Wingstop, our beloved chicken wing quick-service franchisor recently crossed 2600 stores across 11 countries. Among them? Its most recent opening on our very own shores to mark its Australian debut. Last week, the Potts Point establishment saw queues of up to seven hours filled with hungry devotees eager to devour its wings. What’s not to love? The chicken wing is a universal crowd-pleaser. Eaten as a starter, side or main, dined in or taken out, it is delicious, filling and relatively inexpensive. For Wingstop’s franchisees, the business is equally enticing. With upfront opening costs of ~$500,000 and a system that is operable with a compact store footprint to boot, the average unit’s sales are now $2.1m and rapidly rising. That means franchisees enjoy average annual returns on their investment in excess of 50% and climbing. Naturally, they are lining up to open additional units — with more than 2000 already in the pipeline. Given the company’s outstanding economics, Wingstop is poised to continue to grow its dividend, having already increased it at around 20% per annum since initiation in 2017.