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
BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA $52 (Toronto symbol BNS; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.0 billion; Market cap: $52.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.2; Dividend yield: 3.8%; SI Rating: Above Average) is expanding its operations in Thailand. Right now, it owns 49% of Thailand’s Thanachart Bank. Thanachart has agreed to buy rival Siam City Bank. When the deal closes later this year, the combined bank will have more than 660 branches, 2,100 automated-teller machines and 18,000 employees. That will make it Thailand’s fifth-largest bank. Bank of Nova Scotia will contribute $650 million to maintain its 49% stake in the merged bank. That’s 66% of the $988 million, or $0.91 a share, that Bank of Nova Scotia earned in the three months ended January 31, 2010. However, this new investment should add roughly $0.10 a share to the bank’s annual earnings....
ARBOR MEMORIAL SERVICES INC. $25 (Toronto symbol ABO.A; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 10.6 million; Market cap: $265.0 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.0; Dividend yield: 1.8%; SI Rating: Average) owns 41 cemeteries, 26 crematoria, five reception centres and 82 funeral homes in eight provinces. In Arbor’s first quarter, which ended January 24, 2010, its earnings rose 12.8%, to $5.3 million, or $0.49 a share. A year earlier, it earned $4.7 million, or $0.44 a share. Revenue rose 9.9%, to $64.1 million from $58.3 million. Arbor raised fees for funeral services by an average of 4.0%. That offset a 3.3% drop in the number of services performed. The company also sold more cemetery plots, and earned higher income on its investment portfolio....
GENNUM CORP. $7.15 (Toronto symbol GND; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 35.4 million; Market cap: $253.1 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.6; Dividend yield: 2.0%; SI Rating: Average) makes equipment that stores, manipulates and transfers video signals. It also makes chips that improve the flow of data inside computer networks. In its first quarter, which ended February 28, 2010, Gennum’s revenue rose 52.5%, to $29.5 million from $19.4 million a year earlier (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars). The company mainly sells its products to television broadcasters, and the improving economy is giving these clients more money to spend on new equipment. Demand for its data-communication products is also rising. Higher sales were the main reason why Gennum earned $0.12 a share (or a total of $4.0 million) in the latest quarter. It lost $0.02 a share (or $844,000) a year earlier. Gennum spent $8.3 million (or 28.2% of its sales) on research. That’s up 11.6% from $7.5 million (or 38.6% of sales) in the year-earlier quarter. It has also deferred $1.8 million in research costs to future periods, and will write them off once it starts selling the resulting new products. However, there’s no guarantee of success. That increases the risk of a future writedown....
BOMBARDIER INC. (Toronto symbols BBD.A $5.40 and BBD.B $5.39, Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 1.7 billion; Market cap: $9.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 1.9%; SI Rating: Extra Risk) is the world’s third-largest commercial-aircraft maker, behind Boeing and Airbus. Its aerospace division supplies roughly half of its revenue. The other half comes from its transportation division, which is the world’s largest maker of passenger railcars and commuter trains. Bombardier’s revenue rose 33.4%, from $14.8 billion in 2006 (its fiscal year ends January 31) to $19.7 billion in 2009 (all amounts except share price and market cap in U.S. dollars). However, its 2010 revenue fell 1.8% to $19.4 billion. That’s because it received fewer aircraft orders. This decline more than offset stronger railcar sales....
THE WESTAIM CORP. $0.71 has completed its purchase of Montreal-based Jevco Insurance Co. from Kingsway Financial Services Inc. (Toronto symbol KFS). Jevco sells insurance to high-risk drivers, as well as owners of motorcycles, snowmobiles and recreational vehicles. Jevco operates in Quebec and Ontario. Westaim paid $264.2 million for Jevco. Most of the money came from the $275 million that Westaim raised by selling 550 million common shares for $0.50 each. That raised the total outstanding to 644.2 million shares. The Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) bought $148 million of these new shares. AIMCo, a crown corporation, manages Alberta’s public-sector pension plans and other special funds. Westaim structured the sale to limit AIMCo’s ownership to 40%....
EMERA INC., $24.56, Toronto symbol EMA, owns Nova Scotia Power Inc., which is Nova Scotia’s main electrical-power supplier. Nova Scotia Power supplies 94% of Emera’s revenue. The remaining 6% comes from investments in power companies in the U.S. and the Caribbean. This week, Nova Scotia Power and U.S.-based NewPage Corp. agreed to build a new biomass power plant at NewPage’s Port Hawkesbury paper mill in northern Nova Scotia. Biomass power plants generate electricity by burning plant materials and wood waste. This new facility should start operating by the end of 2012. It will then supply 3% of Nova Scotia’s power needs. Under the deal, Nova Scotia Power will invest $200 million in the new plant, including $80 million to buy an existing wood-burning generator. Most of the remaining $120 million will go toward building a second generator. NewPage will build and operate the biomass plant. It will also supply the fuel....
SAPUTO INC., $29.70, Toronto symbol SAP, will distribute its foods in Toronto from a new facility in Vaughn, Ontario (it currently distributes from a number of different warehouses in the city). The company will complete this consolidation in stages, and expects to be finished by the end of September 2010. As well, Saputo will close its plant in Brampton, Ontario, in October 2010. This plant processes milk and cheese products. The company will merge this plant’s operations with its other Ontario facilities. In all, these moves will cost Saputo $4.6 million. However, the company expects the plan to save it $6.5 million a year. To put these figures in context, Saputo earned $104.3 million, or $0.50 a share, in the three months ended December 31, 2009....
BOMBARDIER INC., Toronto symbols BBD.A $5.87 and BBD.B $5.88, continues to win orders for new passenger railcars. This week, the company received an order for 49 additional railcars from France’s regional public-transit authority. That’s in addition to the transit authority’s previous order for 80 railcars. In all, the 129-car order is worth $1.6 billion (all amounts except share price in U.S. dollars). That’s equal to 8% of Bombardier’s annual revenue of $19.7 billion. The company will deliver these trains from June 2013 to mid-2016. As well, Bombardier has started building a new plant in China that will make fuselages for its new CSeries regional jets. The company is also building a new plant in Northern Ireland that will make the wings, and Bombardier will assemble the planes in Montreal. So far, Bombardier has 90 orders for the new plane, worth a total of roughly $7 billion. It will begin delivering the CSeries in 2013....
ENCANA CORP., $31.37, Toronto symbol ECA, fell 8% this week, mainly because the company announced a plan to double its natural-gas production over five years. This announcement pushed down EnCana’s share price because the weak economy has hurt gas demand and depressed prices. Investors worry that adding to existing natural-gas inventories could push prices down further. However, EnCana’s new drilling and extracting technologies are lowering its production costs. That should give it an advantage over its competitors. The company is particularly interested in producing more gas at its Haynesville shale-gas property in Louisiana. (Shale gas is natural gas that is trapped in rock formations. To extract it, companies must pump water and chemicals into the rock. This fractures the rock and releases the natural gas.)...
BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA, $49.49, Toronto symbol BNS, fell 2% this week, even though it reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings. In its first quarter, which ended January 31, 2010, the bank earned $988 million. That’s up 17.3% from $842 million a year earlier. Earnings per share rose 13.8%, to $0.91 from $0.80, on more shares outstanding. That beat the consensus earnings estimate of $0.88 a share. Most of the gains came from the bank’s Canadian retail-banking operations, where earnings rose 27.9%. That’s mainly because low interest rates continue to fuel strong demand for home mortgages and personal loans. As well, improving financial markets have made it easier for companies to issue new shares and debt securities. That pushed up earnings at the bank’s capital-markets division by 27.0%....