Red Friday

Last Friday August 11th is a day that Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust shareholders would sure like to forget. Second Quarter earnings were released and it was not pretty to put it mildly.

Who Is Boardwalk REIT?

Boardwalk REIT currently owns and operates more than 200 communities with over 33,000 residential units totaling approximately 28 million net rent-able square feet. Boardwalk is Canada’s leading owner/operator of multi-family communities with properties in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec.

Boardwalk’s second quarter results came in lower than internal expectations as a result of unanticipated delays relating to the Trust’s suite renovation and re-branding program. They also announced that they did not anticipate meeting their original forecast revenue growth in the last half of the year. Investors responded to this news by selling their shares and the stock tumbled 11.3%. For the last year and a half Boardwalk as struggled with higher vacancy levels, they have had to be aggressive in offering incentives to get tenants to renew their leases. Boardwalk has claimed that some of their problems are due to the challenging economy in Alberta and also new purpose built rental supply has caused a competitive environment in 2016.

Unit Location

As you can see Boardwalk is highly concentrated in Alberta where they have 60% of their residential units. It is no real surprise to see Boardwalk struggle as Alberta has had an economic downturn due to the low oil prices. As an investor I would like to see Boardwalk become more diversified instead of relying mostly on one province.

Second Quarter Financial Numbers

Funds From Operations ($ millions)
Three Months Jun 30, 2017	Three Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change	Six Months Jun 30, 2017	Six Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change
$27.5	$38.5	-28.5%	$53.2	$77.7	-31.5%

Cash Flow From Operations ($millions)
Three Months Jun 30, 2017	Three Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change	Six Months Jun 30, 2017	Six Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change
$25.2	$36.7	-31.40%	$50.6	$65.1	-22%

Revenue ($ millions)
Three Months Jun 30, 2017	Three Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change	Six Months Jun 30, 2017	Six Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change
$105.6	$110.4	-4.4%	$211	$223.8	-5.7%

Net Operating Income ($ millions)
Three Months Jun 30, 2017	Three Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change	Six Months Jun 30, 2017	Six Months Jun 30, 2016	% Change
$54.4	$66.5	-18.2%	$107	$133.5	-19.8%

As you can see these numbers are decreasing not what you want to see as an investor.

Occupancy

	% Occupancy
	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013
January	93.8%	97.5%	97.6%	98.2%	98.3%
February	94.3%	97.4%	97.9%	98.6%	98.5%
March	94.7%	97%	97.8%	98.6%	98.5%
April	95.1%	96.8%	97.7%	98.7%	98.7%
May	95.4%	96.3%	97.3%	98.5%	98.5%
June	95.6%	96.8%	97.2%	98.4%	98.6%
July		94.7%	96.5%	98%	98.2%
August		94.2%	96.6%	98.1%	98.4%
September		94.9%	96.8%	97.8%	98.5%
October		94.6%	97.2%	98.2%	98.4%
November		94.3%	97.4%	98%	98.4%
December		93.8%	97.5%	97.7%	98.4%
Total	94.8%	95.7%	97.3%	98.2%	98.5%

Last year Boardwalk reached a high vacancy rate of 93.8% in December the highest in years. For the first six months of 2017 the vacancy rate has been improving every month and reached 95.6% in June. As you see this year’s numbers are worse than 2016 so the financial numbers don’t really surprise me.

Distribution

Boardwalk pays a monthly dividend of $0.1875 to its unitholders. The dividend maybe in trouble if the downturn persists. The Trust is currently paying out an estimated 103.6% of reported Funds From Operations (FFO) and 133.7% of Adjusted Cash Flow From Operations (ACFO) compared to 74% and 83.4%, respectively for the same period last year.

According to the Trust distributions as a percentage of FFO on a rolling four quarter basis were 95.1%

Reasons To Be Optimistic?

Investing In The Business

I always like to hear when a company invests into their business, I believe it will help their business down the road. At the beginning of 2017 Boardwalk started a renovation and re-branding program. Boardwalk believes this will have long-term value moving forward and that they can charge significantly more for the suites once the renovation is completed.

Some of the work that is being done includes new flooring, baseboards, kitchen cabinets, countertops, appliances, tiling, lighting and fixtures. Through the first six months of 2017, the Trust has placed 2,300 suites under the renovation program. To date, 1,100 suites have been completed. So far the Trust has seen the new suites achieve a return on cost of approximately 8%, while also increasing Net Asset Value 12%.

Through the first six months of this year $92.3 million has been spent on capital improvements ($85.1 million on its investment properties, and $7.2 million on property, plant and equipment). Last year at this time Boardwalk only spent $38.4 million ($35.6 million on investment properties and $2.8 million on property, plant and equipment).

Financial Position

As of June 30, 2017 Boardwalk had $224 million in cash and another $200 Line of Credit available.

Even though they are struggling Boardwalk still has a large amount of cash available to whether this rough patch.

How Was I Affected

I currently own 94 shares of Boardwalk REIT. At the start of last Friday my shares had a $ value of $4,550.54 at the end of Friday this dropped to $4,036.36. It was definitely a tough day as I lost $514.18.

The stock started the day trading at $48.41 and ended the day at $42.94.

Conclusion

While I am concerned with the financial performance of Boardwalk this year, I am going to take a wait and see approach I am not going to rush to the exit and sell my shares. I believe Boardwalk is still in a healthy position financially with what they have in reserve. It seems that they have been able to lease the renovated suites at a higher lease price, hopefully they can figure out the delays and get the renovations done quicker.

So do you own Boardwalk REIT? What would you do if you were me? Please feel free to leave a comment below they are always appreciated.

Thanks for reading

Matthew

My Struggles As An Investor

 

Hello everyone are you an investor in individual stocks and ETFs? Do you have concerns or struggle with how to select a stock or ETF, how many shares should you buy etc…. Then I think this post is for you.

In today’s post I am going to share with you some areas that I struggle with. Back in July 2014 I decided to try investing in stocks that offered a dividend. At that point I had been a index investor for the past six months. You could kind of say I was in no man’s land as an investor bouncing around trying different investment strategies.

When I chose to invest in individual stocks I had zero experience, I didn’t know about what stocks I should be buying, ones I should stay away from etc… I can remember when my brokerage account was opened typing in companies names, and I would look at the share price, then I would grab my calculator and divide that number by 5,000. Why 5,000? Well at that time I had around $55,000 to invest and so I randomly decided that I would invest $5,000 in a stock. Once I got my number of shares that I could buy I would then multiple that by company’s dividend to see how much money I would earn. That is pretty much how I come to own BCE, Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, TransCanada, Fortis and Canadian Utilities.

So let’s now get to some of the issues that I have been struggling with.

What To Look For When Buying A Stock

As mentioned above when I started investing I began buying stocks based on how much money I would earn back in dividends. Not the greatest strategy I know! Last month marked my third anniversary as a dividend investor I no longer just look at how much money I will earn, I look at the following:

• P/E (Price to Earnings)
• Net Earnings
• Revenue
• Dividend
• Payout Ratio

I always tend to feel like I am missing other key metrics to look at. Should I be looking at other metrics??? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Diversification

Here in Canada our stock market is dominated by the resource, financial, telecoms and pipeline sectors. We always hear that we need to be invested in Canadian, US and International equities. At the moment I am invested in 25 stocks and 1 ETF. All of the stocks are Canadian and the ETF is focused on the US market with 100 dividend paying stocks.

I have struggled so far in geographical diversification with my portfolio and it is an area that I need to address. I currently have no investments beyond Canada and the US. Some of my companies have operations around the world Canadian Utilities (Australia, Chile), TransCanada (Mexico), and Power Corp of Canada (Europe, China). However this isn’t enough.

Sector diversification is another area of concern for me, my portfolio currently has the following areas covered.

• financial, telecoms, pipelines, utilities, industrial, consumer and reits.

Areas that I am currently missing:

• healthcare, technology, resources such as gold & silver, renewable energy, infrastructure.

The Canadian Government is currently planning to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure across the country. They are also in the stages of setting up a $35 billion infrastructure bank. So it might be advantageous  to look at industrial companies.

How Much Or Little To Buy

This is one that I seem to have the most difficulty with. I never know the quantity to buy. One reason for this is that my brokerage charges me $9.99 per trade so I try to usually set a minimum of $1,000 per purchase.

At the moment I currently have $2,510 in my Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) so I have a decision to make, if I were to make a purchase today should I buy one stock with the full amount or do I split the money and invest $1,255 in two stocks. This is what usually bounces around in my head before buying.

My last three purchases have been for 33, 26 and 25 shares. I usually set a minimum number of shares to buy at 25 as that seems like a good number to acquire. Do you do the same? Or does the number matter to you?

One stock I like is Canadian National Railway the stock currently trades for $100.37. Let’s say I have $1,000 to spend I would only be able to buy 9 shares which in my opinion is to few. Is my thinking flawed??? Should I look past the number of shares and just focus on making an investment in the company??

Exchange Rate

One problem being a Canadian investor is having to pay US dollars if we want to purchase US stocks. Why is this a problem? Well for the past few years the Canadian dollar has been weaker which raises the price of the stock.

For example if I wanted to buy 1 Apple share at the time of this post an Apple share costs $158.59US that would cost me $200.96 Canadian.

I see other Canadian bloggers and investors continuing to buy US stocks should I?? Why I struggle with this area is because I don’t have a lot of money to invest and always default to Canadian stocks where I can purchase more. Let’s go back to Apple if I were to buy 10 shares that would cost me $1,585.90USD, Canadian it would be $2008.46 so it would cost an extra $422.56. For that price I could get an extra 10 to 15 shares of a Canadian stock.

The exchange rate is a big reason why last November I decided to sell my shares in JP Morgan and Proctor & Gamble as I felt that I wouldn’t be able to buy more. In my mind a way to get around the exchange rate was to invest in an ETF that invests in US stocks, and that is what I did. I own an ETF that invests in 100 dividend paying stocks.

If your a Canadian investor do you worry about the price of the Canadian dollar?? Has it stopped you from buying US stocks?? Or should I not worry about the exchange rate and get back into the US market??

Well folks I hope you like this post. I wanted to share with you some the areas that I have struggled with since I started investing in individual stocks. I’m sure that everyone struggles with investing and I hope you feel comfortable sharing, as I feel that is how we learn and grow and improve ourselves. If you any concerns please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Thank you for reading I appreciate it.

Matthew

July 2017 Income

Hello everybody and thank you for reading this post. Wow we are already into August, 2017 is flying by way to fast in my opinion. I hope all of you had a great month of July collecting lots of dividends. I must say to you all that I am really glad to be a dividend investor and wish I chose this path much sooner in my investing life. I have been blessed so far this year to have year-over-year growth in six of the seven months this year compared to 2016. That one miss was by less than $5, I attribute my success this year to investing in companies that regularly raise their dividends.

My portfolio consists of two accounts the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) and the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP).  July saw me crack the $400 mark for the third time this year. I received income from 15 companies and 1 ETF. In my TFSA account I received $116.08. My RRSP account received $286.03.

TFSA

Inter Pipeline	$17.87
Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust	$17.63
Chorus Aviation	$17.28
ZCL Composites Inc.	$15.24
The Keg Royalties Income Fund	$15.24
Artis Real Estate Investment Trust	$13.95
Boston Pizza Royalties Fund	$12.31
Corus Entertainment	$6.56

July saw me receive income from every investment I own in the account.

RRSP

BCE	$78.93
TransCanada	$63.75
Telus	$49.25
Algonquin Power & Utilities	$45.61
BMO US Dividend ETF	$31.29
Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp	$16.76
NorthWest Company	$0.32
Leon’s Furniture	$0.12

Yearly Dividends

I increased my income in July by $34.78 compared to July 2016. Dividend raises and new purchases were the cause of the increase.

2017 Dividend & Goal

As you all know that I have set a goal of wanting to reach $4,000 in dividends in 2017. As we enter the 8th month of the year I am just $1,471.54 away from achieving the milestone.

Dividend Increases/Decreases

It was a quiet month on this front for me. None of my companies announced any increases or decreases.

Buys/Sells

July saw me make one purchase:

• On July 7th I purchased 33 shares in Alimentation Couche-Tard

 

So that’s a wrap for my July income report. A pretty successful month in my opinion. I hope all of you did great as well. Please let me know how you did.

Thank you for reading 🙂

Matthew

New Purchase Alimentation Couche-Tard

Hi guys I made another purchase and wanted to share it with you. On July 7th I purchased shares of Alimentation Couche-Tard. Who is Alimentation Couche-Tard? well let me tell you.

Alimentation Couche-Tard was started in 1980 by founder Alain Bouchard with one store by 1986 the network had increased to 34 stores. Fast forward to 2017 and Couche-Tard has become the leader in the Canadian convenience store industry. In the United States, it is the largest independent convenience store operator in terms of the number of company-operated stores. In Europe, Couche-Tard is a leader in convenience store and road transportation fuel in the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden and Denmark) in the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and in Ireland, with an important presence in Poland.

As of June 30th, 2017 Couche-Tard has a total of 9,424 stores in North America and another 2,754 in Europe in the countries stated above.

Store Count

Above I created a chart showing the total store count with North America and Europe combined. Please note that the number of stores that sell fuel is the North American number I could not find a number for Europe. The vast majority I am led to believe sell fuel in Europe.

Also Couche-Tard has licensing agreements that cover close to 1,700 stores in 13 other countries (China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam) that operate under the Circle K banner.

Couche-Tard In Canada

In Canada Couche-Tard is all over the country. There are currently three banners in use Mac’s, Couche-Tard and Circle K. Beginning in May of this year Canada will start to lose the Mac’s banner and they will be replaced with Circle K. These changes will take place throughout Canada except in Quebec where the Couche-Tard logo will remain.

Couche-Tard in The United States

In the United States Couche-Tard operates under a few banners as you can see CST, Kangaroo Express, Circle K and CAP). Soon the Kangaroo Express, CST and CAP banners will be disappearing and will be replaced with the Circle K banner.

European Operations

As you can see Couche-Tard has a big presence in Europe and operates with three banners (Topaz, Circle K and Ingo) as with the United States soon Circle K will be the only banner.

Net Earnings

Couche-Tard has a strong management team that continues to delivery impressive earnings. They have the ability to go and scout out potential acquisition targets usually large chains, when they complete the purchase they quickly absorb the new stores into the network with little trouble.

Key Acquisitions Over The Last Six Years

1.  2012: Statoil 2,300 stores Couche-Tard’s first acquisition in Europe
2.  2015: The Pantry operator in the southeastern United States with 1,500 stores
3.  Feb 1st, 2016: Topaz Energy in Ireland 444 service stations are acquired
4.  Sept 7th, 2016: 278 Imperial Oil locations located near Toronto and in Quebec
5.  June 28th, 2017: CST Brands officially acquired 1,300 locations added to the network.

Why Did I Purchase More Shares

• Helps diversify my portfolio. Increases my consumer staples allocation
• Couche-Tard continues to display impressive and growing earnings
• Good Management team with a successful track record
• Future looks bright

Dividend

Couche-Tard doesn’t pay a big dividend but they have grown it year after year. The stock currently pays a quarterly dividend of $0.09. This company is in growth mode now and is focused on looking for more stores to buy. The yield on the stock is 0.58 as of Saturday.

Transaction Details

So before this new purchase I owned 9 shares with an average cost of $63.85.

On July 7th I spent all the money I had available in my RRSP account and purchased an additional 33 shares at $59.57 at a cost of $1,965.81 + $9.99 (trading cost) total cost of the trade was $1,975.80.

I now currently own 42 shares with an average cost of $60.72 I am happy I was able to lower my costs.

The additional 33 shares will boost my annual income by $11.88

The source of some of the pictures and information used in this post was from annual reports and the company’s website.

So what do you think of my new purchase? Do you own the stock? Please let me know I enjoy reading your comments.

Thanks for reading I appreciate the support.

Matthew

 

2017 Goals Review #2

 

Hi everyone thanks for stopping by in today’s post I will be providing you with an update on the goals I set at the beginning of the year. This is the second year that I have set goals and thought It would be good to post quarterly progress reports to help me on track, and to also to share with you my progress. If you would like to read my first review please click here.

So let’s go and check out my goals. All the numbers below are as of July 1st.

Personal Finance

• Eliminate my loan of $3,818 √
• Increase savings to $6,000 $10,000

As you can see I have set two personal finance goals. Why have I set these specific goals? Well I chose them because I have decided that I need to improve my finances. I found that if anything bad were to happen I wasn’t probably prepared. So for my first goal as of April 1st I still had $1,247.03 remaining on the loan, I am very happy to report that I was able to pay off my loan by the end of April.

I was able to pay it off by the end of April because I received my income tax refund from the government. For my second goal back in January when I sat down and created my goals I had an emergency fund of only $2,500 and I thought this was too slow so first I set a goal of increasing my savings to $6,000. So to help achieve this I picked up a second job which provides me with $600 in income per month. On April 1st I had increased my savings to $4,333.20 seeing how I was getting close to $6k and I wasn’t even at June I decided to increase my goal to $10k.

On July 1st my savings have decreased to $3,417.51. Why the drop off you ask? I had a couple of unexpected expenses first off my laptop died in May so I replaced it with a new Dell laptop which wasn’t cheap since I use my laptop a lot and make them last a long time I decided to spend more money on it around $1,400 after tax. I know yikes expensive. My second expense was I needed new brakes on my car and some other stuff done to it and that cost me around $500.

So these two issues have set me back a bit but rest assured I am still going to attempt to reach $10K by year end I won’t give up 🙂

Portfolio/Investing

• Invest $4,000
• Receive $4,000 in Dividends

This year I decided to set a goal of investing $4k on April 1st I had invested $700. On July 1st I have been able to boost that number to $2,150 I am on pace to achieve my goal. I reason why I was able to invest $1,450 in the last three months is because I paid off my loan which has freed up cash to invest.

My second goal of wanting to receive $4k in dividends that is going well. On April 1st I had received a total of $1,075.99 on July 1st that number has increased to $2,126.35. Thanks to a couple of purchases and a number of dividend increases it looks like I might surpass the $4k mark.

Blog

• Have 15,000 page views
• Have 30 followers

I decided on these goals because I wanted to see if I could grow the blog and thought they would be the best to judge growth. So for page views I set the goal at 15,000 at the beginning of April I had received 3,015 views so I averaged slightly over 1,000 per month. At the end of June that number increased to 5,709. By the look of these numbers I won’t meet up goal I will be a couple thousand short. Ways to improve my numbers, post for than once a week, talk about a different topic (I have been thinking about doing some personal finance posts). Also I have been thinking about pinterest to see if I can gain new followers that way.

I have had better success with my second goal of wanting to achieve 30 followers. On April 1st I had 19 followers, at the beginning of the year I had 6. On July 1st my followers increased to 24. It looks like I will achieve my goal and I can’t thank my followers enough, you guys are awesome and I appreciate it.

Twitter

• Reach 1,500 followers

Why did I make this a goal?? Well I though it would be fun to do, to see if I could reach this number. If you would like to follow me then please click here. On April 1st I had 981 followers from April to June that number increased to 1,128. If I want to reach my goal I need to add 372 followers in six months.

So that wraps up my second review of 2017. I hope everyone is on pace to reach and surpass their goals. Thank you for reading this I appreciate your support. Please feel free to leave a comment I enjoy reading them.

Thanks

Matthew

 

 

June 2017 Income Report

Hello everyone and thank you for stopping by my site. First of all I hope my fellow Canadians all had a great Canada Day long weekend. I also hope my American friends and readers are having a great July 4th long weekend. This is my favourite post of the month to do as I get to share with you how my portfolio performed last month.

June was a fairly quiet month for me in terms of buying and selling as I only made one transaction. In terms of dividends received it was busy. June saw me receive dividends from 14 companies and 1 ETF. My portfolio currently consists of 25 stocks and 1 ETF, my portfolio also consists of two accounts the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) and the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP).  In June I received a total of $362.19 in dividends, $100.84 in my TFSA and $261.35 in my RRSP.

Let’s take a look at what I received last month.

TFSA

Inter Pipeline	$17.87
Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust	$17.63
Chorus Aviation	$17.28
The Keg Royalties Income Fund	$15.24
Artis Real Estate Investment Trust	$13.95
Boston Pizza Royalties Fund	$12.31
Corus Entertainment	$6.56

RRSP

Fortis	$64.40
Enbridge	$57.32
Canadian Utilities	$55.41
BMO US Dividend ETF	$31.29
Power Corp	$21.15
Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp	$16.76
Exco Technologies	$8.00
Westjet	$7.00

2016 and 2017 Dividends

As you can see my income increased by nearly $100 ($93.19 to be exact) compared to 2016. This is due to my increased investments in Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust, Chorus Aviation, Westjet and Power Corp of Canada. Also I made a new investment earlier this year in Exco Technologies. Also another contributor is dividend increases from six companies.

2017 Dividends

At the beginning of the year I set a goal of wanting to receive $4000.00 in dividends. As you can see through six months of 2017 I am on pace to surpass that goal. Hopefully I can maintain this pace for the second half of the year.

Increases/Decreases

In June none of my companies increased or decreased their dividends.

Buy/Sell

I made one purchase in June.

• On June 9th I purchased 26 shares of Enbridge

 

Well folks that wraps up my June report. I hope everyone had a great month as well. Please feel free to let me know how you did in the comment section.

Thanks for reading I greatly appreciate your support.

Take care

Matthew

56 and Counting

Hello everyone as we quickly approach July I thought I would share with you that I have an anniversary coming up. July 7th will mark my third year as a dividend investor, so I thought why not talk about all the dividend increases I have received since 2014. I have kept track of how many raises I have received from each company and the dollar amount that they have boosted my income by.

Where did I get the idea to keep track of dividend increases? Well I got the idea from the newspaper. I read the Globe and Mail everyday, as I believe they have the best business section of any paper here in Canada. Back in 2012 the paper started what they called a Strategy Lab in which four writers picked an investing strategy (growth, value, dividend and index investing). Each writer had $50,000 in virtual cash and could hold as many as 12 stocks in their portfolio. On Wednesday’s there is a column called the Yield Hog written by John Heinzl and he is the dividend investor in the Strategy Lab, John periodically does updates on his virtual portfolio. It was in one of his updates where I saw he tallied up all of his increases and the dollar amount, I thought it was an excellent idea because it allows an investor to see what kind of growth you can have by just investing in stocks that regularly increase their dividends.

Why do I keep track of the increases and dollar amount? I keep track of them because I love numbers. I call myself a numbers nerd. When I was a kid I can remember in the summer time I would buy a notebook then throughout the summer since I am a big baseball fan I’d go through the paper everyday to see the box scores and I would keep track of all the stats. Ok back to investing another reason why I do this is because it allows me to see which companies raise their dividend more frequently. It also helps me where to direct my money and add to my positions. For example I have received three increases of Enbridge, they have been increasing their dividend for the past 22 years. In the past two months I have added 51 shares of Enbridge, and I have also increased my position in Power Corp.

So let’s take a look at what I have received over the past three years.

Stock	Number Of Increases	Income From Increases
Royal Bank of Canada	6	$45.12
Bank of Montreal	6	$34.08
Telus	4	$24.04
Enbridge	3	$54.52
Fortis	3	$50.76
Canadian Utilities	3	$49.92
BCE	3	$43.36
TransCanada	3	$57.68
Algonquin Power & Utilities	3	$43.75
Alimentation Couche-Tard	3	$1.28
Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp.	3	$12.60
Proctor and Gamble	2	$6.44
The Keg Royalties Income Fund**	2	$11.22
Power Corp	2	$9.00
JP Morgan	2	$28.16
BMO US Dividend ETF	2	$42.96
ZCL Composites Inc **	1	$102.87
Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust	1	$14.64
Inter Pipeline	1	$7.80
Chorus Aviation	1	$20.88
Magna International	1	$2.80
North West Company	1	$0.04
Westjet	0	$0.00
Boston Pizza Royalties Fund	0	$0.00
Artis Real Estate Investment Trust	0	$0.00
Leon’s Furniture	0	$0.00
Exco Technologies	0	$0.00
Total	56	$663.92
** Means I Received a Special Dividend not counted as a dividend increase

So as you can see I have received a total of 56 raises for a total of $663.92 that’s not to bad in my opinion. All I had to do to earn that money was make an initial investment in these companies then sit back and watch the dividends go into my account. I don’t drip my dividends I take the cash which allows me the choice of investing in whichever stock I want.

I do have a handful of stocks that have yet to raise their dividend I am not to worried about them I am sure at some point they will reward shareholders with a raise. In the mean time I can continue to rely on great stocks such as Royal Bank, Telus, Enbridge, and BCE etc…

Well you guys are you a numbers nerd like me?? Do you keep track of your dividend increases? Please let me know I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for reading this post I greatly appreciate your support.

Matthew

New Purchase

Happy Monday everybody 🙂 and welcome to my latest post. I made another purchase and thought I would share it with you.

Last Friday June 9th I added to my position in Enbridge (ticker: ENB). This is my second purchase of Enbridge this year, you can read about my purchase last month here. For the past month I have been watching the stock and the price has continued to drop as well as the price of oil. When I see the stock of a quality company such as Enbridge fall I always look to try and purchase some shares to reduce my average costs, this time I was successful.

Details

On June 9th I purchased 26 shares at a cost of $51.79 per share. The total cost of the purchase is $1,356.53.

After this purchase I now hold a total of 145 shares of Enbridge with an average cost per share of $54.51. With this latest buy I was able to reduce my costs by $0.75.

Income

The additional 26 shares will boost my quarterly income by $15.86. Annually my income will increase $63.44.

Enbridge is now one of my biggest holding’s in my portfolio. I believe the company has a bright future and will continue to add shares if the price drops further.

Well folks thanks for reading. What do you think of my purchase? Please feel free to leave a comment I always enjoy reading them.

Thanks for stopping by.

Matthew

May 2017 Income Report

Hello everyone and welcome to my May income report. This is my favourite post to write as I get to share with you how I did in the past month. The month of May was a busy one for my portfolio I had a couple of buys and some dividend increases from my investments. My income was down slightly from last May that is due to my decision to sell Proctor & Gamble last year.

My portfolio currently consists of 25 stocks and 1 ETF, they are split into two accounts the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) and the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP). I received $284.35 in May, my TFSA account received $100.84 and my RRSP account received $183.51.

TFSA

Inter Pipeline	$17.87
Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust	$17.63
Chorus Aviation	$17.28
The Keg Royalties Income Fund	$15.24
Artis Real Estate Investment Trust	$13.95
Boston Pizza Royalties Fund	$12.31
Corus Entertainment	$6.56

RRSP

Royal Bank of Canada	$66.99
Bank of Montreal	$62.48
BMO US Dividend ETF	$31.29
Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp	$16.76
Potash Corp	$5.99

2016 vs 2017 Dividends

As you can see compared to last May my income decreased by $4.18. The drop was due to my selling Proctor & Gamble shares last year. I almost got my income back up to the same level thanks to dividend increases from several stocks and a couple of acquisitions.

Dividends Year to Date

In the first five months of 2017 I have received a total of $1,764.16. I have set a goal this year of receiving $4,000. In June if all goes well I should receive over $300 and with June ending the first half of 2017 that would put me on the path to achieving my goal.

Buys/Sells

I made two purchases in May.

1.  May 9th purchased 23 shares of Power Corp (ticker : POW) @$31
2. May 11th purchased 25 shares of Enbridge (ticker : ENB) @$54.85

 

Increases/Decreases

May has busy for me in this area, I received 4 increases.

1. May 4th Enbridge raised the dividend 5% to $0.61 from $0.583. This is the second raise from Enbridge this year.
2. May 9th Telus raised their dividend to $0.4925 from $0.48.
3. May 9th Power Corp raised their dividend 7% to $0.3585 from $0.3350
4. May 24th Bank of Montreal raised their dividend 2.3% to $0.90 from $0.88

 

So that wraps up my May income report. I hope you all had a great month and received lots of dividends. I would like to thank you for reading I appreciate your support.

Take care

Matthew

Thanks Power Corp., Telus and BMO

Hi guys in May I received three dividend increases and I thought I would share them with you. It is always nice to receive money for doing nothing, I should know as I work 7 days a week. So far in 2017 I have received 12 dividend increases and one special dividend.

My first increase came on May 9th from Telus.

TELUS Corporation (TELUS) is a telecommunications company. The Company provides a range of telecommunications services and products, including wireless and wireline voice and data. Its data services include Internet protocol (IP), television (TV), hosting, managed information technology and cloud-based services, and certain healthcare solutions. The Company operates through two business segments: Wireless segment and Wireline segment. Its wireless and wireline businesses are primarily operated through TELUS Communications Company (TCC). The Company offers business services, including healthcare, across wireless and wireline are supported through TELUS sales representatives, product specialists, independent dealers and online self-serve applications for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

(Source Google Finance)

On May 9th the Board of Directors at Telus announced an increase to the company’s dividend, the 13th since 2011. The new dividend will be $0.4925 from $0.48 and is payable on July 4th to shareholders of record on June 9th. This will be my 4th increase I have received from Telus since owning the stock.

Income

I currently own 100 shares so with the increase my income will increase $1.25 per quarter or $5 annually.

The second increase I received came from Power Corp.

 

Power Corporation of Canada is a diversified management and holding company. The Company has interest in the financial services, renewable energy, communications and other business sectors. Its principal asset is the controlling interest in Power Financial Corporation (Power Financial). Its segments are Great-West Lifeco Inc. (Lifeco), IGM Financial Inc. (IGM) and Pargesa Holding SA (Pargesa). Lifeco offers life insurance, health insurance, retirement and investment services, and is engaged in the asset management and reinsurance business. IGM is a financial services company operating in Canada, primarily within the advice segment of the financial services market. Pargesa is a holding company with diversified interests in Europe-based companies active in various sectors, such as minerals-based specialty solutions for industry; cement, aggregates and concrete; testing, inspection and certification; wines and spirits, and electricity, natural gas and energy and environmental services.

(Source Google Finance)

Also on May 9th the Board of Directors at Power Corp. (ticker: POW) announced a 7% increase to the dividend. The new dividend is $0.3585 from $0.3350 and is payable on June 30th to shareholders of record on June 9th. This marks the third consecutive year that they raised the dividend. I have owned the stock since 2016 and this marks the second increase I have received from them.

Income

I currently own 59 shares of Power Corp. with this announcement my income increases $1.39 per quarter or $5.56 annually.

My third increase announcement came from Bank of Montreal (BMO)

Bank of Montreal (the Bank) is a financial services provider. The Bank provides a range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services. The Bank conducts its business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking (P&C), Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets. The P&C business includes two retail and business banking operating segments, such as Canadian Personal and Commercial Banking (Canadian P&C), and the United States Personal and Commercial Banking (U.S. P&C). The Bank’s Wealth Management business serves a range of client segments, from mainstream to ultra-high net worth and institutional, with an offering of wealth management products and services, including insurance. BMO Capital Markets is a North American-based financial services provider offering a range of products and services to corporate, institutional and government clients. The Bank has over 1,500 bank branches in Canada and the United States.

(Source Google Finance)

On May 24th the Board of Directors at Bank of Montreal (ticker: BMO) announced a 2.3% increase to the dividend. The new dividend will be $0.90 from $0.88 and will be payable on August 28th to shareholders of record on August 1st. I have owned shares of the bank since 2014 and this is the 6th increase I have received.

Income

I currently own 71 shares of BMO and my income will increase $1.42 per quarter or $5.68 annually.

Combined these raises increased my annual income $16.24 not a huge amount but pretty good for not having to do anything. Also with BMO and Telus over the last several years they have been boosting their dividends semi-annually so if all goes well shareholders should be receiving another raise later this year.

Thanks for reading everybody and congrats on the raises if you own these stocks.

Take care

Matthew