224 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 Home Depot. We also became entitled to our quarterly dividend from Salesforce, while FirstService and Abbott declared their quarterly dividends, all meaningfully higher than this time last year.
How We Are Tracking
Since DivGro's inception we have predicted and benefited from 224 consecutive dividend increases across our portfolio companies, with no decreases. The average rate of these dividend increases is 13.9%.
DivGro in the Press
This week, we featured on Money Tree Investing. The podcast is available on Apple and Spotify.
Abbott
Abbott, our global healthcare leader, just declared its 411th consecutive quarterly dividend — that’s every quarter since 1924 — and has increased its dividend consecutively for the last 54 years, propelling its stock price in parallel. Abbott was an early adopter of the ‘doing well by doing good’ movement, wherein it focused on healthcare innovations in large but faster-growing markets, where it could achieve a leadership position. To avoid resting on its laurels, and with its keen desire to innovate and foster creativity and resourcefulness amongst employees, Abbott took the unusual step in 2013 to spin off AbbVie, housing the world’s best-selling drug, Humira. Shortly thereafter, Abbott’s creativity was exemplified by the launch of the Freestyle Libre. Today, Freestyle Libre is relied upon by more than seven million diabetics or prediabetics, propelling Abbott into the dominant player in the fast-growing area of non-invasive glucose monitoring. Given it requires replacement every 14 days, Freestyle Libre epitomises the aforementioned ‘doing well by doing good’ movement championed by Abbott, proving both a significant healthcare breakthrough and a recurring, high-margin profit engine. In combination with the rest of its portfolio, it underscores Abbott’s continued ability to upscale its dividend growth credentials for many years.