Dividend Income – Jan 2017 Update

Wow it’s hard to believe it’s February already. Where did January go? Seems that Christmas was just yesterday. I guess that’s what happens when we spent half of January in Denmark.

I always get excited to write about monthly dividend income updates. Why? Because the monthly income is money that we receive for doing absolutely nothing. Other than the initial investment and the occasional monitoring, there’s very little work involved. In my opinion, dividend income is one of the best passive income sources.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at our January dividend income.

January Dividend Income

In January 2017 we received dividend income from the following companies:

Pure Industrial REIT (AAR.UN)
Agrium (AGU.TO)
BCE (BCE.TO)
Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO)
Care Capital Properties (CCP)
Corus Entertainment (CJR.B)
CIBC (CM.TO)
Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)
Dream Office REIT (D.UN)
Dream Global REIT (DRG.UN)
Dream Industrial REIT (DIR.UN)
General Electric (GE)
H&R REIT (HR.UN)
Inter Pipeline (IPL.TO)
KEG Income Trust (KEG.UN)
MCAN Mortgage Corp (MKP.TO)
Prairiesky Royalty (PSK.TO)
Rogers (RCI.B)
RioCan REIT (REI.UN)
Telus (T.TO)
TD (TD.TO)
TransCanada Corp (TRP.TO)
Domtar Corp (UFS.TO)
Vanguard Can All Cap (VCN.TO)
Vanguard All-World Ex Canada (VXC.TO)
Wal-Mart (WMT)

In January 2017 we received a total of $1,112.37 in dividend income from 26 companies. $32.48 was in USD while $1,079.89 was in CAD. This is one of the months that’s Canadian currency dominated. Please note, we use a 1 to 1 currency rate approach. Therefore, we do not convert the dividends received in US dollar into Canadian currency. Reason for doing this is to keep the math simple and avoid fluctuations in dividend income over time due to changes in the exchange rate.

The top 5 dividend payouts were Bank of Nova Scotia, CIBC, Rogers, Telus, and TransCanada Corp. The top 5 payouts correspond to 46.6% of our January dividend income.

Dividend Growth

Compared to January 2016 we saw a HUGE YOY growth of 30.56!!!Needless to say, I’m extremely pleased and surprised with this number.

If you are wondering, our dividend growth is contributed by three things – investing fresh capital, purchasing of additional shares through dividend reinvesting plan (DRIP), and individual dividend stock’s organic dividend growth each year. Last year alone we added over $45,000 into our dividend portfolio. This is excluding all the additional shares purchased with DRIP and dividend reinvestment. As you can see, utilizing the power of all three of these factors have allowed us to growth our dividend income quite significantly. Can we continue such impressive YOY growth rate for the rest of 2017? Probably not, considering that we received close or over $1,000 for the rest of 2016. If we can continue the YOY growth matrix at over 20% I would be quite happy.

Dividend Increases & DRIP

In January a number of  companies that we own in our dividend portfolio announced dividend increases:

• Enbridge (ENB.TO) raised dividend by 10% to $0.583 per share.
• Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO) raised dividend by 10% to $0.4125 per share.
• Exco Technologies (XTC.TO) raised dividend by 14% to $0.08 per share.
• Omega Healthcare (OHI) raised dividend by 1.64% to $0.62 per share.
• ConocoPhillips (COP) raised dividend by 6% to $0.265 per share.
• BCE Inc. (BCE.TO) raised dividend by 5.13% to $0.7175 per share.
• Brookfield Renewable Partners (BEP.UN) raised its dividend by 5% to $0.61 per share.

All these raises have increased our annual dividend income by $105.14.

To take advantage the power of compound interest, we are enrolled in DRIP for many of our holdings. In January we managed to DRIP additional 11 shares of various dividend paying stocks. This resulted in an increase of $20.47 in our annual dividend income moving forward.

By utilizing organic dividend growth and DRIP, we have managed to gain a total of $125.61 in our forward annual dividend income. To get the same dividend increase, at a 3% dividend yield, we would have to invest $4,187 of new capital. Essentially we got a pay raise for doing absolutely nothing at all. Gotta love that!

Conclusion and Moving Forward

2017 is still fresh but we have already received a total of $1,112.37 in dividend income already. As indicated previously, our goal for 2017 is receive over $15,000 in dividend income. It’s a challenging goal but we are up for a challenge. I can’t wait to see what 2017 has in store for us.

Dear readers, how was your January dividend income?