Dividend Increases, Jul/Aug 2013

Every month I provide a summary of recent dividend increases for stocks in my watch list. Regular dividend increases are one of the important factors to consider when evaluating dividend growth stocks. 

When a stock's dividend payment is decreased, I'll generally remove it from my watch list. And if I happen to own shares in a stock that decreases its dividend payment, I'll consider selling my shares. As I've said before, this blog is about dividend growth stocks, not dividend shrink stocks!

The following table provides a summary of recent dividend increases for stocks in my watch list, sorted by the last column, %Increase. Dividend amounts are annualized. 

Dividend Increases: Jul 16 - Aug 15, 2013

Company	Ticker	Price (Aug 14)	Previous Dividend	New Dividend	Current Yield	%Increase
Vodafone Group Plc	VOD	30.02	1.02	2.09	6.95%	+105.23
Union Pacific Corporation	UNP	156.78	2.76	3.16	2.02%	+14.49
Petmed Express Inc	PETS	15.68	0.60	0.68	4.34%	+13.33
Wisconsin Energy Corporation	WEC	41.60	1.36	1.53	3.68%	+12.50
Kinder Morgan Inc	KMI	37.61	1.52	1.60	4.25%	+5.26
Kellogg Company	K	64.46	1.76	1.84	2.85%	+4.55
Norfolk Southern Corp.	NSC	73.55	2.00	2.08	2.83%	+4.00
Leggett & Platt, Inc.	LEG	29.86	1.16	1.20	4.02%	+3.45
Main Street Capital Corporation	MAIN	29.13	1.86	1.92	6.59%	+3.23
Alliance Holdings GP, L.P.	AHGP	63.83	3.05	3.14	4.92%	+2.95
Omega Healthcare Investors Inc	OHI	29.98	1.84	1.88	6.49%	+2.17
Textainer Group Holdings Limited	TGH	34.12	1.84	1.88	5.51%	+2.17
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd	TEVA	40.38	1.07	1.09	2.71%	+2.03
Alliance Resource Partners, L.P.	ARLP	74.85	4.52	4.61	6.16%	+1.99
Community Trust Bancorp, Inc.	CTBI	39.29	1.26	1.28	3.26%	+1.59
Energy Transfer Equity, L.P.	ETE	65.21	2.58	2.62	4.02%	+1.55
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP	KMP	82.00	5.20	5.28	6.44%	+1.54
GlaxoSmithKline plc	GSK	51.53	2.20	2.21	4.29%	+0.54
AstraZeneca plc	AZN	49.71	3.80	1.80	3.62%	-52.63

Highlighted in the table is TGH, a stock in DivGro. 

TGH's modest dividend increase raises its current yield to 5.51%. The next quarterly dividend of 47 cents per share will be payed on August 27, to shareholders of record on August 14.

Notice that AZN shows a significant dividend decrease. Some global stocks that trade as American Depository Receipts (ADRs) on local exchanges have a pattern of paying one smaller dividend and one larger dividend every year. AZN pays dividends in February and August. The pattern for AZN since 2010 looks like this:

( $1.71   $0.70 )   ( $1.85   $0.85 )   ( $1.95   $0.90 )   ( $1.90   $0.90 )

By paying $0.90 this month, AZN has confirmed a year-on-year dividend decrease, though the decrease is less than 2%. I'll probably remove AZN from my watch list for this reason.

VOD shows a significant dividend increase for a similar reason. It has a pattern of paying dividends in June and November, so I'm taking the 105.23% dividend increase with a grain of salt.

Full Disclosure: Long TGH