Dividend Stocks
Dividends can produce as much as a third of your total return over long periods, and you can even retire on dividends.
There are 4 key stock dividend dates that are involved with dividend payments:
1- The Declaration Date is several weeks in advance of a dividend payment—it’s when company’s board of directors sets the amount and timing of the proposed payment.
2- The Payable Date is the date set by the board on which the dividend will actually be paid out to shareholders.
3- The Record Date is for shareholders who hold the stock before the payable date and receive the dividend payment. That date is set any number of weeks before the payable date.
4-The Ex-Dividend Date is two business days before the record date and it’s when the shares begin to trade without their dividend. If you buy stocks one day or more before their ex-dividend date, you will still get the dividend. That’s when a stock is said to trade cum-dividend. If you buy on the ex-dividend date or later, you won’t get the dividend. The ex-dividend date is in place to allow pending stock trades to settle.
We think very highly of stocks that have been paying dividends for five or more years, at TSI Network. Many of these stocks fit in well with our three-part Successful Investor philosophy:
1- Invest mainly in well-established companies;
2- Spread your money out across most if not all of the five main economic sectors (Manufacturing & Industry; Resources & Commodities; Consumer; Finance; and Utilities);
3- Downplay or avoid stocks in the broker/media limelight.
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Dividend Stocks Library Archive
TORSTAR CORP. $8.96 (www.torstar.com) recently bought Heartsong Presents Book Club, a publisher of Christian romance novels, for an undisclosed sum through its Harlequin book-publishing subsidiary. This purchase nicely complements Harlequin’s “Love Inspired” line of inspirational novels. Best Buy. PENGROWTH ENERGY CORP. $9.90 (www.pengrowth.com) will focus on developing its western Canadian oil properties in 2012. Due to lower natural gas prices, it will hold off on further investments in its gas properties during the year. Buy. ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $54 (www.rbc.com) has formed a new alliance with Shoppers Drug Mart, which operates over 1,200 drug stores in Canada. Under the deal, Shoppers’ customers can use a new Royal Bank Visa credit card to earn reward points on their purchases. The bank will also install 300 new automated teller machines in Shoppers’ stores. Buy.
IMPERIAL OIL LTD., $47.37, Toronto symbol IMO, reported sharply higher earnings for 2011, mainly due to rising oil prices and higher production. During the year, the company earned $3.4 billion, or $3.95 a share. That beat the consensus estimate of $3.55 a share. The 2011 earnings are also up 52.5% from $2.2 billion, or $2.59 a share, in 2010. Revenue rose 22.4%, to $30.7 billion from $25.1 billion. Cash flow per share rose 33.1%, to $4.70 from $3.53. Imperial gets most of its oil from its Cold Lake oil sands project in Alberta. Cold Lake’s daily production rose 11.1%, to a record 160,000 barrels in 2011 from 144,000 barrels in 2010. That helped offset lower production of conventional oil and natural gas. In all, Imperial produced an average of 297,000 barrels of oil equivalent (including natural gas) in 2011, up 1.0% from 294,000 barrels in 2010....
GENNUM CORP., $13.48, Toronto symbol GND, jumped 119.2% this week after it accepted a $13.55-a-share takeover offer from U.S.-based Semtech Corp. (Nasdaq symbol SMTC). Gennum designs electronic equipment and computer chips that let television broadcasters store, edit and transfer video signals without losing picture quality. It also designs chips that make computer networks faster. The company’s shares are now trading just below Semtech’s offer. This indicates that investors do not expect a higher price. Regulators and Gennum shareholders must still approve the deal, but it should close in April 2012....
PLEASE NOTE: Next week, Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our newsletter that focuses on the U.S. stock markets, will reveal its #1 pick for 2012. TRANSCANADA CORP., $41.81, Toronto symbol TRP, fell 2% this week after the U.S. State Department rejected the company’s plan to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which would pump oil from the Alberta oil sands through Oklahoma to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. However, TransCanada is working to reroute the pipeline around environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska. Once it finalizes the new route, the company can reapply for a permit. If approved, the pipeline could begin operating in 2014....
CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY LTD., $70.77, Toronto symbol CP, is our “Stock of the Year” for 2012. Next week, Stock Pickers Digest, our newsletter for aggressive investors, will reveal its #1 pick for 2012. We’ve had great success with CP since we recommended it in the first issue of The Successful Investor in January 1995. In October 2001 the old CP broke up into five separate companies: CP Rail, CP Ships, Fording Coal, Pan Canadian and Fairmont Hotels. In 2002, PanCanadian merged with Alberta Energy to form EnCana, which broke up into Encana and Cenovus in December 2009. All of these mergers and breakups unlocked significant shareholder value. Railways are highly cyclical. Unpredictable factors, such as weather, also add risk: in 2011, avalanches in B.C. and spring floods in the Prairies delayed CP’s trains and hurt its earnings....
We’ve chosen Canadian Pacific Railway as our “Stock of the Year” for 2012. Railways are highly cyclical. CP’s stock got as low as $30 in mid-2004, then shot up to briefly peak at $90 in mid-2007. It then fell to a low of $33 by March 2009, as the recession cut deeply into freight volumes. The stock more than doubled to $68 by February 2011 as the economy recovered. However, avalanches in B.C. and spring floods in the Prairies hurt CP’s volumes and earnings in 2011. The stock fell as low as $46 in September. It then began to rise in October, as the economic outlook and the stock market both improved. The company now has a new plan for dealing with bad weather and raising its efficiency. The recent involvement of a prominent American hedge fund may speed up CP’s earnings growth, and spur further gains in its stock price....
CGI GROUP INC. $19 (Toronto symbol GIB.A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 260.7 million; Market cap: $5.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.cgi.com) was our “#1 Stock of the Year” for 2010 and 2011. The company is Canada’s largest provider of computer-outsourcing services. CGI’s services can automate routine functions, such as accounting and buying supplies. That makes its clients more efficient, and lets them focus on their main businesses. CGI’s earnings jumped 19.9% in its 2011 fiscal year, which ended September 30, 2011, to $435.1 million from $362.8 million a year earlier. CGI spent $305.0 million on share buybacks in fiscal 2011. Due to fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share rose 27.4%, to $1.58 from $1.24. Revenue rose 15.8%, to $4.3 billion from $3.7 billion. If you exclude the negative impact of exchange rates, revenue would have risen 18.9%....
These tech stocks are well below their 2011 highs. However, all have strong balance sheets and rising research spending that will help them compete in their rapidly changing industries. Even so, they will likely remain highly volatile, so they should only account for a small portion of your portfolio. RESEARCH IN MOTION INC. $16 (Toronto symbol RIM; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 524.2 million; Market cap: $8.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.4; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rim.com) has suffered several setbacks in the past few months, including a network outage in October 2011 that stopped or slowed the delivery of emails to its BlackBerry smartphone users. As well, sales of RIM’s PlayBook tablet computer have been slower than expected. That forced RIM to write down unsold inventory. Excluding unusual items, RIM’s earnings fell 26.8% in its fiscal 2012 third quarter, which ended November 26, 2011, to $667 million, or $1.27 a share. (All amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars.) A year earlier, it earned $911 million, or $1.74 a share. RIM spends 7% of its revenue on research....
DUNDEE CORP. $24 (Toronto symbol DC.A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 51.7 million; Market cap: $1.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 6.6; No dividends paid; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.dundeecorp.com) is buying the 51% of Dundee Capital Markets Inc. (Toronto symbol DCM) that it does not already own. This business sells investment-management and brokerage services. This purchase will cost Dundee roughly $89 million, which is slightly more than the $88.6 million, or $1.29 a share, that it earned in the three months ended September 30, 2011. Taking full control will let Dundee lower this business’s administrative and other costs. The deal needs shareholder and regulatory approvals, but it should close in the first half of 2012. Dundee is a buy.
CAE INC. $10 (Toronto symbol CAE; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 257.6 million; Market cap: $2.6 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.5; Dividend yield: 1.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.cae.com) earned $38.4 million in the quarter ended September 30, 2011. That’s down 1.8% from $39.1 million a year earlier. Earnings per share were unchanged at $0.15 on more shares outstanding. If you exclude costs to integrate Medical Education Technologies, Inc. (METI), which CAE recently purchased for $130 million U.S., CAE would have earned $41.1 million, or $0.16 a share, in the latest quarter. METI makes medical simulators and other products for training paramedics and medical students. Revenue rose 11.7%, to $433.5 million from $388.0 million. METI contributed $7.1 million to the increase. In addition, demand for CAE’s flight simulators and pilot-training services continues to rise as airlines replace their aging planes with newer models....