Payout Boost: 32 years and counting

Article Excerpt

AT&T INC. $36 (New York symbol T; Income Growth Dividend Payer Portfolio, Utilities sector; Shares outstanding: 6.2 billion; Market cap: $223.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.4; Dividend yield: 5.4%; Dividend Sustainability Rating: Highest; www.att.com) will buy media company Time Warner Inc. (New York symbol TWX). If you include Time Warner’s debt, the deal is $108.7 billion. Following the purchase, Time Warner investors will own 15% of the company. The deal gives AT&T access to a wide library of popular video content. That programming should help attract the growing number of subscribers who want to stream video on their smartphones. The new operations should also add to AT&T’s earnings in the first year. The company is raising its quarterly dividend by 2.1% with the February 2017 payment, to $0.49 a share from $0.48. The new annual rate of $1.96 yields 5.4%. AT&T has now increased the payout each year for the past 33 years. AT&T is a buy. For more on AT&T, click HERE. HERE…