Quarterly Review, Q4-2015

This is the 12^th quarterly review of DivGro, concluding 3 years of dividend growth investing and blogging. Soon I'll post an annual review of my portfolio's performance in 2015.

In my previous quarterly review (Q3-2015) I talked about big plans for Q4-2015, including selling stocks I no longer believe should be in my portfolio and merging the holdings of my Scottrade portfolio with those in DivGro. So I'll be reporting on those moves as well as DivGro's performance in Q4-2015.

Last quarter, I reported projected annual dividend income of $6,954 and year-to-date dividend income of $4,836. These numbers now stand at $6,776 and $7,907, respectively.

Projected dividends decreased because I sold several stocks in November and December. Before December's sells, DivGro's projected dividends increased to $8,018. I achieved 5 out of 8 of my 2015 goals, including earning more than $7,500 in dividend income in 2015.

Dividend Income

DivGro's dividend income in Q4-2015 totaled $3,070, a significant increase over last quarter's total of $1,781. A good portion of the record dividend income comes from the transfer of past dividends (from my Scottrade portfolio). Excluding those dividends, I earned $1,721 in dividend income in Q4-2015. This amount represents an increase of 51% from the year-ago quarter, Q4-2014.


DivGro's average percentage payback is 7.98%, up from 6.44% at the end of Q3-2015. Percentage payback relates dividend income to the total amount of capital invested.

Transactions

Capital funds increased $34,648 in Q4-2015. This amount includes passive income deposits of $766, new capital of $6,000 and transfers of past capital deposits totaling $27,882.

Here is a summary of my buys in Q4-2015:

Company	Ticker	Date	Transaction
ConocoPhillips	COP	30 Oct	bought 47 shares at $53.93 per share
HCP, Inc	HCP	29 Jul	bought 75 shares at $34.00 per share
Qualcomm, Inc	QCOM	24 Nov	bought 90 shares at $49.32 per share

The QCOM buy was a tax-loss harvesting purchase, which I completed on 31 December when I sold 65 shares of QCOM at $51.06 per share.

Additionally, I closed several positions in Q4-2015:

Company	Ticker	Date	Transaction
PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust	PMT	2 Nov	sold 120 shares at $14.81 per share
Textainer Group Holdings Limited	TGH	4 Nov	sold 75 shares at $14.94 per share
AmeriGas Partners, LP	APU	29 Dec	sold 120 units at $33.87 per share
Energy Transfer Partners, LP	ETP	29 Dec	sold 100 units at $33.19 per share
Vanguard Natural Resources, LLC	VNR	29 Dec	sold 180 shares at $3.01 per share
Seadrill Ltd	SDRL	29 Dec	sold 172 shares at $3.63 per share

The reason for closing my PMT and TGH positions is dividend cuts. As for APU, ETP, and VNR, I no longer wish to invest in Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs). In my opinion, the higher yields of MLPs are not worth the complicated tax filing procedures. I elaborated on my speculative foray into SDRL, which turned out disastrously and taught me a valuable lesson. Enough said.

At the end of Q4-2015, DivGro contained 52 stocks.

Dividend Adjustments

Ten of DivGro's holdings announced dividend increases in Q4-2015:

Company	Ticker	Increase	Annual Div	New  YoC
The Walt Disney Company	(DIS)	7.58%	$1.42	1.45%
Pfizer Inc	(PFE)	7.14%	$1.20	4.79%
AFLAC Incorporated	(AFL)	5.13%	$1.64	3.28%
McDonald's Corporation	(MCD)	4.71%	$3.56	3.79%
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation	(NTT)	4.56%	$0.73	3.25%
Energy Transfer Partners, LP	(ETP)	1.93%	$4.22	8.90%
Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc	(OHI)	1.82%	$2.24	6.00%
W.P. Carey, Inc	(WPC)	1.01%	$3.86	5.77%
STAG Industrial, Inc	(STAG)	0.70%	$1.39	7.34%
Realty Income Corporation	(O)	0.26%	$2.29	4.68%

In Q4-2015, DivGro's projected annual dividend income decreased by $180 to $6,776, a decrease of 2.59%. Average yield on cost (YoC) is 4.10%, down from 4.42% at the end of Q3-2015. YoC decreased because I closed several positions in December 2015.

Market Value

At the end of Q4-2015, DivGro's market value of $178,872 represented a simple loss of 2.22% on $182,935 invested. Of course, a simple loss does not take into account the timing and size of cash deposits. DivGro's time-weighted return since inception is 17.4%.

Other Highlights

Following are some additional highlights of Q4-2015. 

Page Views

DivGro hit 360,000 page views on 22 December 2015, adding a little more than 50,000 page views in Q4-2015. The daily average page views continues to steadily climb:

	25 September 2015  daily average page views since inception: 311
	18 October 2015  daily average page views since inception: 314
	2 November 2015  daily average page views since inception: 319
	19 November 2015  daily average page views since inception: 323
	5 December 2015  daily average page views since inception: 328
	22 December 2015  daily average page views since inception: 332

This quarter, DivGro averaged 567 page views per day, down slightly from an average of 569 page views in Q3-2015.

Popular Posts

In Q4-2015, I wrote 35 articles, including 10 premium articles for Seeking Alpha and 2 articles for The DIV-Net. Here are links to the 3 most popular premium articles published on Seeking Alpha in Q4-2015:

• 18 October: Recent Buy: Exxon Mobil (8,179 page views to date)
• 2 November: Recent Buy: ConocoPhillips (3,808 page views to date)
• 1 November: 13 Dividend Increases, October 26 To October 30, 2015 (2,219 page views to date)

The 3 most popular articles posted on my blog in Q4-2015 are:

• 10 November: Changes Are Coming! (726 page views to date)
• 18 December: Goals for 2016 (691 page views to date)
• 30 April: Blogroll Page Reorganized (572 page views to date)

Here is my personal favorite article of Q4-2015, originally posted on The DivNet on 23 December:

• 30 December: The Blogger's Dividend Growth Portfolio, 2015 Edition (543 page views to date)

Outlook For Q1-2016

In Q1-2016, I'll complete the process of transferring my Scottrade holdings to DivGro and start to chip away on my overall goals for 2016. I'm also planning on restarting my monthly ranking of a selection of dividend growth stocks. The last article in this series appeared in July 2015. The reason for the hiatus will become evident in my first article – it has to do with the way I filter David Fish's CCC stocks for the ranking process. I'm hoping to include more stocks in the ranking process, which requires a more robust and automated ranking system.

Thanks for reading and I wish you the very best in 2016!