Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, February 8, 2019

Article Excerpt

3M COMPANY, $199.82, New York symbol MMM, makes over 60,000 consumer and industrial goods, including Post-It notes, Scotch tape, Scotch-Brite cleaning products, Scotchguard fabric protection and Thinsulate insulation. Starting with the March 2019 payment, the company will raise its quarterly dividend by 5.9%, to $1.44 a share from $1.36. The new annual rate of $5.76 yields 2.8%. 3M has paid dividends continuously for over 100 years, and has increased that rate each year for the past 61 years. In the three months ended December 31, 2018, overall sales fell 0.6%, to $7.95 billion from $7.99 billion a year earlier. Even so, that beat the consensus forecast of $7.87 billion. If you factor out currency rates and businesses that 3M bought and sold, sales improved 3.0% in the quarter. The company reported higher sales in all of its businesses and regions. Earnings rose 6.3%, to $1.37 billion from $1.29 billion. The company spent $1.3 billion on share buybacks in the latest quarter. Due to…