Dividend Income – June 2018 Update

3.5 weeks after getting sick and having bronchitis, I am finally feeling better. The coughing is still lingering though, so hopefully that’ll go away soon. Although I have been walking a lot the last 3.5 weeks, it would be good to start some high-intensity exercises at the gym.

July is upon us and that means we are enjoying the awesome sunny weather here in Vancouver. With lots of sunshine that also means our backyard veggie garden is growing very nicely. We have been busy harvesting strawberries, raspberries, kale, etc and using them in meals and desserts.

raspberries
strawberries and various veggies
Tomatoes and cucumbers are growing nicely in the greenhouse
Blackcurrant and red currant. Almost ready for harvest.
Baby T1.0 planted some corns in the spring and they are growing nicely
Fresh raspberries from our daily harvest
Baby T1.0 made this cake himself (with a little help)
koldskål (Danish cold buttermilk dessert) with strawberries

I’m sure the veggie garden will keep us pretty busy over the next few months.

 

June Dividend Income

In June we received dividends from the following companies:

  • Brookfield Renewable (BEP.UN)
  • BP (BP)
  • Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
  • ConocoPhillips (COP)
  • Canadian Tire (CTC.A)
  • Canadian Utilities (CU.TO)
  • Chevron (CVX)
  • Dream Office REIT (D.UN)
  • Dream Global REIT (DRG.UN)
  • Dream Industrial REIT (DIR.UN)
  • Enbridge (ENB.TO)
  • Enbridge Income Trust (ENF.TO)
  • Fortis (FTS.TO)
  • Hydro One (H.TO)
  • Intel (INTC)
  • High Liner Foods (HLF.TO)
  • H&R REIT (HR.UN)
  • Intact Financial (INF.TO)
  • Inter Pipeline (IPL.TO)
  • Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
  • KEG Income Trust (KEG.UN)
  • Magellan Aerospace Corp (MAL.TO)
  • McDonald’s (MCD)
  • Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
  • Magna International (MG.TO)
  • MCAN Mortgage Corp (MKP.TO)
  • Prairiesky Royalty (PSK.TO)
  • Qualcomm (QCOM)
  • RioCan (REI.UN)
  • Saputo (SAP.TO)
  • SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
  • Suncor (SU.TO)
  • Target (TGT)
  • Unilever plc (UL)
  • Visa (V)
  • WestJet (WJA.TO)
  • Waste Management (WM)
  • Wal-Mart (WMT)
  • Exco Technologies (XTC.TO)

In total, we received $1,690.82 from 39 companies in June 2018. This is yet another all-time monthly dividend income record!!! As you can see from the chart above, there’s a nice spike for June 2018. It sure looks nice!

It’s hard to believe that for the 5th time in 2018, we broke our all-time monthly dividend income. Wow! And not to mention that we received 39 pay cheques, so our dividend income is well diversified.

We were only $9.18 short of the $1,700 milestone. Originally I had thought that Evertz Technologies would pay dividend in June, since the previous dividend payment was in Mar. As it turned out, Evertz Technologies is paying the dividend in July. If Evertz Technologies had paid dividend in June instead of July, we would have easily broken the $1,700 record. Darn it!

The big jump in June’s dividend income mostly had to do with our purchases of Enbridge shares earlier this year. We received almost $400 in dividend income from Enbridge alone in June.

Out of the $1,690.82 received, $308.01 was in USD and $1,382.81 was in CAD. Or about a 20-80 split. If you are a long time reader to our monthly dividend income reports, you will know that we use a 1 to 1 currency rate approach. We do not convert dividends received in USD to CAD. We are ignoring exchange rate to keep the math simple. This is our way to avoid fluctuations in dividend income over time due to changes in the exchange rate.

The top 5 dividend payouts in June 2018 were Manulife Financial, Suncor, Enbridge, Chevron, and Intact Financial (not in order). Dividend payouts from these 5 companies accounted for 45.2% of our June dividend income, or $764.32.

 

Dividend Income Breakdown

We hold our dividend stocks in taxable accounts, RRSPs, and TFSAs. Every year, we maximize tax-advantaged accounts first before investing in taxable accounts.

For June 2018 dividend income, here’s the breakdown of the different accounts:

  • Taxable: $495.92 or 29.3%
  • RRSPs: $680.97 or 40.3%
  • TFSAs: $513.93 or 30.4%

Effectively, only 29.3% of our June dividend income was taxable.

We constructed our taxable accounts so we only receive from stocks that pay out eligible dividend income. Since we plan to live off dividend income when we are financially independent, we want to construct our portfolio to be as tax efficient as possible. This way, we can minimize income tax during financial independence.

 

Dividend Growth

Compared to June 2017, we saw a respectable YOY growth of 24.92%!

That is the highest YOY number so far in 2018. I’m extremely happy and excited to see that we did so awesome in this performance matrix.

With 6 months in the book, we are averaging a YOY growth of 18.65%. In 2016, after 6 months, we had a YOY growth average of 20.52%. So clearly we are slowing down a bit when it comes to dividend YOY growth. However, as I have indicated many times before, this is a natural phenomenon for dividend growth investors as your dividend income increases.

 

Dividend Increases

So far in 2018, many dividend stocks that we own in our dividend portfolio have announced dividend payout increases.

  • Target raised its dividend by 3.23% to $0.64 per share.
  • Starbucks raised its dividend by 20% to $0.36 per share.

 

Dividend Stock Transactions

Because we had closed out a couple of positions in May, we had a higher than usual amount of cash on hand. So we paid attention to any significant price drops during June to see if we could purchase dividend paying stocks at a discount.

Lucky for us, we encountered a few opportunities to deploy the extra cash and added shares to two stocks that we already own.

  • Purchased 20 shares of Starbucks (SBUX)
  • Purchased 57 shares of Laurentian Bank (LB.TO)

After the June 19 earnings release, Starbucks’ stock price went down to nearly 20% from their recent highs. This mostly due to Starbucks gave a lower than expected growth in their guidance. On top of this bad news, Howard Schultz stepped down as executive chairman and CFO Scott Maw retired unexpectedly. However, in the earnings release, Starbucks did announce a $10B increase in their current share buyback program. This meant they are eligible to purchase up to $26B of the company’s stock. With Starbucks share price being close to the 52 week low, a buy-back program will generate some nice value and returns for shareholders.

For me, I see this price drop as a short-term pain. Starbucks appears to be growing nicely in Asia and the $8B retail distribution deal with Nestle will increase the accessibility of Starbucks products to customers. So we took a calculated risk and purchase a small amount of Starbucks shares and to cost average our cost basis.

Similarly, the price of Laurentian Bank has gone nowhere/downward since our purchase earlier this year. Since we already own quite a bit of the Big Five (and National Bank), we decided to purchase more Laurentian Bank shares to diversify our exposure in the financial sector and to cost average our cost basis.

 

Conclusion

So far in 2018, we have received a total of $8,829.71 in dividend income. It’s hard to believe with only 6 months in, we have already exceeded our 2014 dividend income total!

Mrs. T and I continue to be appreciative of our dividend income. Thanks to the dividend portfolio that we have been building over the last few years, our money is working hard for us so we don’t have to.

Gotta love that!

How was your June dividend income?

 

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49 thoughts on “Dividend Income – June 2018 Update”

  1. Awesome results, Bob!

    Congrats and I hope you are inspiring more and more people with your portfolio as well with your garden skills!
    Interesting how sowing and reaping come together in many ways in 1 man’s life.

    regards,
    Petra
    Hong Kong

    Reply
  2. Congrats on breaking another all time dividend income record. Must be a great feeling having those records fall almost every month. Keep sharing and inspiring us all on your journey. Like the SBUX pick up. I’ve been away on a family road trip the last two weeks and feel like I missed the SBUX low. Still may pick some up at these levels as I have not made my July buy(s) yet. Keep it up!

    Reply
    • Thank you DivHut. It was a great feeling to break the record once again. 🙂

      SBUX price is still relatively low so might be worth it to buy some.

      Reply
  3. Hi Tawcan,

    nice you feel better now. Also nice your portfolio felt well all the time continuing to produce income while you lay down sick. Once again, you manged 1st place in income stability with 0.85 out of 1. Yet, you shared 1st rank with a German blogger only buying us stocks also trying to create an evenly distributed income stream throughout the year.

    Probably till next month. Stay healty!

    Torsten

    Reply
  4. Bob,

    Just freaking incredible. Congratulations on setting another record. All your hard work is truly starting to pay off and the results continue to shine through. I love reading this post every month and looking through the pictures/what you have going on in your garden. IT gets me motivated to get off my but and get my yard into better shape! Can’t wait to read about a new record in July once again.

    Bert

    Reply
    • Hi Bert,

      Thank you. The hard work (i.e. saving and investing) is paying off but we still have a long way to go before our dividend income is equal or greater than our expenses. But we understand it takes time. 🙂

      Get your butt moving and start planting veggies in your yard. It’s so worth it, and it saves money in the long run too.

      Reply
  5. I like how you are planting vegetable seeds and financial seeds and showing your progress on both =P. Both look amazing by the way! I’ve said it before, but I really like how your payments every month are pretty similar in amount. This makes EVERY MONTH a great month for you. Thanks for the motivation.

    Reply
  6. Bob, first of all, congrats on the huge increase from last year. But, that table at the end just made my day and really shows the power of compounding. The idea that 6 months into 2018 is more than the entire year you had in 2014 is awesome!!!

    Reply
  7. Those are some awesome results. And another one who is buying up SBUX stocks. It looks like everyone is buying them at the moment except me LOL. 🙂

    Enjoy the fruits of your hard work (see what I did there) 😉

    Reply
  8. sweet Bob. congrats! Enbridge is my biggest payer as well.

    nice to see manulife in your top payouts. I have really been debating buying more. I love what they are doing in Asia.

    Anyways keep it up man. clearly your doing great. Your garden is sweet as well.

    cheers

    Reply
  9. Glad to hear that you’re feeling better. That garden is amazing and really makes me miss even the little garden that we used to have in our yard.

    Very impressive work to hit yet another record, and it is great to see that chart reaching the top now. Counting the divs in my retirement account allowed me to crack the $1k mark for the first time. It looks like June was good to quite a few within the DGI community!

    Reply
    • It’s nice to finally feel better, this cold hit me hard. :S

      Cracking $1k mark for the first time is very impressive. Congrats on your new record!

      Reply
  10. Congrats. Fantastic growth.

    Really admire your courage. I dared not to buy ENB when it’s very low. Now it’s up so much. Not only you got more dividend, also nice capital gain. I did buy some MRU and SAP on dip though, it’s nice to see the price up.

    Reply
    • Thank you May, I really appreciate that. I was second guessing a little bit when we purchased ENB earlier this year too but I felt it was a great opportunity so I took a chance. Looks like it’s paying off, so that’s nice to know. Buying MRU and SAP on dip is a great idea. 🙂

      Reply
  11. Fantastic dividend growth Tawcan! Like I told you in person, it happens faster than you think!

    These days our dividend growth is much slower of course, but I still aim for a good mix of external and internal compounding.

    Glad your feeling better! The garden looks great!

    Reply
    • Gotta listen to the wise Mr. Tako more hehe. 🙂

      Yes finally feeling better, probably will aim to go back to the gym this week.

      It gets tougher to grow dividend once you are FIRE’d and not injecting a lot of new capital into the portfolio. But that’s another problem to have. 🙂

      Reply
  12. Good job. Knocking on the door of 1700.00 is nothing to sneeze at. Looks like you will also blow last years numbers out of the water. Keep it up.

    Reply
  13. Looks like you’re on track to hit $2k at some point this year, congrats!

    We have a bunch of raspberry bushes in our yard too but very few are ripe so far, not that I ever get any of them since the kids love them so much.

    Reply
    • Still have a long way before we catch you. 🙂 😉

      Both of our kids love eating raspberry too. They also love the strawberries, red currant, and black currant too. It’s nice to teach them about where food comes from at a young age.

      Reply
  14. Very impressive dividends this month! What % of your expenses does this cover now? Plus, its great to hear that you’re feeling better, especially as summer gets into full swing. Being sick in the summer is the worst!

    PS. I love the garden! I’ve got a small veggie garden but it’s growing every year.

    Reply
    • Didn’t run what % of our expenses the dividend can cover, maybe I should do that for July dividend income update. 🙂

      It’s so awesome to have a veggie garden and eating stuff that you grow yourself.

      Reply
  15. What a garden! In a years time I predict we’ll be reading about Tawcan’s side hustle at the farmers-market.

    Great jobs on the dividends. Maybe the only thing sweeter than the raspberries in this post.

    Reply
  16. haha, your chart is getting too small 🙂 Now that is a luxury problem that one should have!
    Nice month Bob, double dividend (financial and vegetable) is always good.

    Reply

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