Hey guys, again it is time to have a look at the recent dividend increases, in March and April there have been a couple of them :). As you all know the advantages of a dividend investor and especially of a dividend growth investor should be that the companies increase their dividends every year. This year I want to start tracking my dividend increases more carefully.

As you can see my portfolio consists of:

• some slow growers like all the utilities or ORI, which on the other side already offer a very good yield
• steady growers like Johnson & Johnson or Pepsi etc.
• fast growing stocks like CVS

My goal is to have an average annual dividend growth of 7.5% per year. Giving the mixture of my portfolio this is a very challenging goal, as I do not have that many fast growing companies in my portfolio. But as you can see in my recent stock valuation articles in the future I will definitely concentrate my investment decision more on the potential dividend growth.

So let’s have a look at the recent dividend increases in 2017

US Stocks

• PG: Yearly dividend from 2.678 to 2.76 USD 3.06% Increase
• JNJ: Yearly dividend from 3.20 to 3.36 USD 5.00% Increase
• IBM: Yearly dividend from 5.60 to 6.00 USD 7.14% Increase
• SO: Yearly dividend from 2.24 to 2.32 USD 3.57% Increase

Austrian Stocks

• Uniqa Insurance: Yearly dividend from 0.47 EUR to 0.49 EUR 3.57% Increase
• Österr. Post AG: Yearly dividend from 1.95 EUR to 2.00 EUR 3.57% Increase

Based on the numbers of shares I have of each company and the already published dividend increases it makes an average dividend increase of 4.58%, which is behind my goal of 7.5%. As I just have started to track this development I am already looking forward to seeing the other increases which will come up in the next couple of months. To avoid any misunderstandings, I only included the declared dividend increases in 2017 and only of those stocks I have bought before the increase was declared. That’s why CVS and VFC are missing in that list.

How much more income do I generate

In total I am generating now 32.33 EUR more dividend income before tax and based on a constant FX-Rate. If you look at this number, this does not look a lot but considering my current dividend yield before taxes of 3.95% it would mean an additional investment of 817.47 EUR. If I am looking at my current interest rate of my saving account of 0.30% I would need 10 776 EUR to generate an income of 32.33 EUR. So, after all the 32.33 EUR do not look that bad anymore. Nevertheless I have to admit that I am behind my to generate an average increase of 7.5%. But let’s see what the other increases for the rest of the year will look like.