Dividend Stock News

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With a “19% y/y increase in its fourth-quarter profits, boosted by its robust sales growth performance across the board,” Staples “announced a 25% hike in its annual cash dividend to $0.25 per share.”

Mathew Emmert of Fool.com says to stay with what you know

The fact is that dividend stocks are most likely to be the types of companies that you can understand. These are the firms that make real products and provide real services that create real cash flow. They then pay some of this real cash flow out to real shareholders in the form of real dollars. You can then choose to reinvest those real dollars into additional shares of real company stock or take them down to the grocery store to buy a carton of eggs and make yourself a real omelette or go on a vacation and get yourself a real sunburn.

Their press release reports

LSB Corporation declared a dividend to shareholders on January 27, 2005. The Board voted to pay a cash dividend of $0.14 per share (or an increase of 7.7%).

Kiplinger reports that dividends are becoming popular as more investors realize their tax benefits

But in today’s more uncertain times, people like the security that only cash dividends can provide. The 15% maximum tax rate on dividends helped persuade many companies to boost their payouts, as did the cash hoards that many corporations amassed during the past few years.

Their press release reports

• Fixed/Adjustable Rate Noncumulative Preferred Stock -$0.68250 per share
• 6-5/8% Cumulative Preferred Stock, Series H - $8.28125 per share (equivalent to $0.828125 per Depositary Share)

David Peltier of TheStreet.com claims that they are an almost sure-fire way of making a consistent return

The benefit of dividends isn’t a new concept, however: Howard Silverblatt, market equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s, calculated in November that dividends accounted for 41% of the benchmark index’s gains since 1926. Share buybacks also remain a popular, though less tax-advantaged way to return cash to investors. But another reason to prefer dividends is that the terms are well-defined, whereas funds to repurchase a company’s stock are authorized to be disbursed at management’s discretion, if even at all.

Business Week reports that the holding dividend stocks will only become more profitable

According to a study by Standard & Poor’s, 2005 should be a record year for increases in both the number of companies increasing their dividend amounts and in total dollars paid out. S&P expects companies in the S&P 500-stock index to distribute a total of $21.80 per share, or $203 billion, a 12% increase over $181 billion paid out in 2004. That’s some serious loot.

The Motley Fool reports:

In the investing world, dividends appear to be hot right now. I’m amused at how various kinds of investments rise and fall in popularity over the years, as I suspect that the systems that work best will work always (the same goes for plumbing). Nevertheless, I welcome any attention that dividends receive, because dividends can contribute a lot to a portfolio’s growth.