Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, January 24, 2020

Article Excerpt

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP., $140.56, is a buy. The company, New York symbol IBM, is one of the world’s largest computer companies, with operations in over 175 countries. With the June 2019 payment, IBM raised its quarterly dividend by 3.2%, to $1.62 a share from $1.57. The new annual rate of $6.48 for investors yields a high 4.6%. The company has paid dividends continuously since 1916 and has raised the annual rate each year for the past 24 years. Investors saw their shares rise after IBM reported better-than-expected results following its July 2019 purchase of Red Hat Inc. for $34 billion. Red Hat is a leading developer of software for cloud-based computing systems. (Cloud systems let users access computer programs online and store files on a company’s remote servers.) Its programs use the open-source Linux operating system. That lets Red Hat adapt its software to work on a wide variety of computer-hardware systems. If you exclude costs related to that purchase and other unusual…