The DivGro Weekly—03.10.25

198 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 Danaher, FirstService and Stryker, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.

How We Are Tracking

Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 198 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 14.4%.

Danaher

In 1984, Steve and Mitch Rales founded Danaher and have grown it into a life sciences and diagnostics champion. Over four decades, the company has compounded its market value in excess of 20% per annum compounded, with 2024 sales of $24 billion. So, how has Danaher established this astonishing record? Its excellence may be distilled within the now-famous Danaher Business System: the company seeks to buy or build businesses in which it continuously improves operations leading to ever-increasing sales and margins, and gradually transitioning sales towards a recurring nature. While copycats have attempted to emulate this model, what differentiates Danaher is its founders’ unique time horizon, appreciating that developing truly exceptional businesses takes time — in the order of 25-30 years — with the outer years producing the biggest payoffs. Today, their primary focus is embedding Danaher within emerging therapy discovery and manufacturing in order to capture increasing sales, at increasing margins, for multiple decades over the commercial lifespan of emerging applications. With these concentrated efforts already proving effective, and with a recent 18% dividend increase, Danaher is well positioned to continue its impressive dividend growth trajectory.