Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, March 7, 2025

Article Excerpt

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA, $165.38, Toronto symbol RY, is a buy. With the February 2025 payment, Royal raised your quarterly dividend by 2.9%. Investors will then receive $1.48 a share instead of $1.42. The new annual rate of $5.92 yields 3.6%. The bank continues to benefit from its March 2024 purchase of the Canadian operations of U.K.-based HSBC Holdings plc (New York symbol HSBC) for $15.5 billion. HSBC operates 130 branches that mainly cater to businesses in industries that trade and bank internationally. It also provides banking and wealth management services to about 780,000 retail clients. In all, it had total assets of $134 billion. Royal is now converting most of those HSBC branches to its own banner. HSBC clients will also receive new accounts and credit cards. In all, the bank expects it will cost $1.5 billion to integrate the new operations. So far, eliminating overlapping operations has cut $524 million from Royal’s annual costs. It still expects to realize annual cost savings of…