dividend

DIVIDEND



.Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sit at home, reading by the pool, living off dividend checks that arrive regularly through the mail? Before you can even hope to achieve that level of financial independence, you must understand what dividends are, how companies pay dividends, and the different types of dividends that are available such as cash dividends, property dividends, stock dividends, and liquidating dividends, just to name a few.
That's why I put together this step-by-step Dividends 101 resource. It will walk you through the basics, ensuring that you have a solid foundation before diving into the more practical content in our Ultimate Guide to Dividends and Dividend Investing. By starting here, you'll learn to avoid tax traps such as buying dividend stocks between the ex-dividend date and the distribution date, effectively forcing you to pay other investors' income taxes! You'll also learn why some companies refuse to pay dividends, how to calculate dividend yield, and how to use dividend payout ratios to estimate the maximum sustainable growth rate.

Clear off your desk, grab a pen and notepad, and get a cup of coffee. You're about to embark on a journey that will put you years ahead of other new investors on understanding dividends and the important role they plan in your investment portfolio



How a Company Pays Dividends and the Three Dividend Dates that Matter to You

Before a company can pay cash dividends to shareholders, it has to go through a legal checklist that includes declaring a declaration date, ex-dividend date, date of record, and distribution date. As an investor, you need to know what these represent.

Mike Kemp, Getty Images
.Companies that earn a profit can do one of three things: pay that profit out to shareholders, reinvest it in the business through expansion, debt reduction or share repurchases, or both. When a portion of the profit is paid out to shareholders, the payment is known as a dividend. For many investors, "living off dividends" is the ultimate goal (for more information about this, you can read the 10 Part Guide to Income Investing.
During the first part of the twentieth century, dividends were the primary reason investors purchased stock. It was literally said on Wall Street, “the purpose of a company is to pay dividends”. Today, the investor’s view is a bit more refined; it could be stated, instead, as, “the purpose of a company is to increase my wealth.” Indeed, today’s investor looks to dividends and capital gains as a source of increase. Microsoft, for example, did not pay a dividend until it had already become a $350 billion company, long after making the company’s founders and long-term shareholders multi-millionaires or billionaires.


The Process
Dividends must be declared (i.e., approved) by a company’s Board of Directors each time they are paid. There are three important dates to remember regarding dividends.

•Declaration date: The declaration date is the day the Board of Director’s announces their intention to pay a dividend. On this day, the company creates a liability on its books; it now owes the money to the stockholders. On the declaration date, the Board will also announce a date of record and a payment date.

•Date of record: This date is also known as “ex-dividend” date. It is the day upon which the stockholders of record are entitled to the upcoming dividend payment. According to Barron’s, a stock will usually begin trading ex-dividend or ex-rights the fourth business day before the payment date. In other words, only the owners of the shares on or before that date will receive the dividend. If you purchased shares of Coca-Cola after the ex-dividend date, you would not receive its upcoming dividend payment; the investor from whom you purchased your shares would.

•Payment date: This is the date the dividend will actually be given to the shareholders of company.
A vast majority of dividends are paid four times a year on a quarterly basis. This means that when an investor sees that Coca-Cola pays an $0.88 dividend, he will actually receive $0.22 per share four times a year. Some companies, such as McDonald’s, pay dividends on an annual basis



Cash Dividends, Property Dividends, and Special One-Time Dividends

Cash dividends literally represent money sent to you in the mail or direct deposited into your bank account. The goal of successful investing is to be able to have cash dividends pour into your life regularly so you don't need to work unless you desire.

John Shaw, Getty Images
.Cash Dividends
Regular cash dividends are those paid out of a company’s profits to the owners of the business (i.e., the shareholders). A company that has preferred stock issued must make the dividend payment on those shares before a single penny can be paid out to the common stockholders. The preferred stock dividend is usually set whereas the common stock dividend is determined at the sole discretion of the Board of Directors (for reasons discussed later, most companies are hesitant to increase or decrease the dividend on their common stock). You can find a detailed discussion of preferred stock and its dividend provisions in The Many Flavors of Preferred Stock: A Possible Investment for Your Fixed Income Portfolio.
Property Dividends
A property dividend is when a company distributes property to shareholders instead of cash or stock. Property dividends can literally take the form of railroad cars, cocoa beans, pencils, gold, silver, salad dressing or any other item with tangible value. Property dividends are recorded at market value on the declaration date.

Special One-Time Dividends
In addition to regular dividends, there are times a company may pay a special one-time dividend. These are rare and can occur for a variety of reasons such as a major litigation win, the sale of a business or liquidation of a investment. They can take the form of cash, stock or property dividends. Due to the temporarily lower rates of taxation on dividends, there has been an increase in special dividends paid in recent years.

To add sugar to spice, there are times when these, special one-time dividends are classified as a “return of capital”. In essence, these payments are not a payout of the company’s profits but instead a return of money shareholders have invested in the business. As a result, return of capital dividends are tax-free.

Special one-time dividends sometimes offer an opportunity for arbitrage


Dividends and How They are Different From Stock Splits

Stock dividends are issued when a firm mails additional shares of stock to the owners instead of, or in addition to, cash dividends. Although you aren't any richer with stock dividends that you were before, there are strong psychological benefits.

.Stock Dividends
A stock dividend is a pro-rata distribution of additional shares of a company’s stock to owners of the common stock. A company may opt for stock dividends for a number of reasons including inadequate cash on hand or a desire to lower the price of the stock on a per-share basis to prompt more trading and increase liquidity (i.e., how fast an investor can turn his holdings into cash). Why does lowering the price of the stock increase liquidity? On the whole, people are more likely to buy and sell a $50 stock than a $5,000 stock; this usually results in a large number of shares trading hands each day.

A practical example of stock dividends:
Company ABC has 1 million shares of common stock. The company has five investors who each own 200,000 shares. The stock currently trades at $100 per share, giving the business a market capitalization of $100 million.
Management decides to issue a 20% stock dividend. It prints up an additional 200,000 shares of common stock (20% of 1 million) and sends these to the shareholders based on their current ownership. All of the investors own 200,000, or 1/5 of the company, so they each receive 40,000 of the new shares (1/5 of the 200,000 new shares issued).

Now, the company has 1.2 million shares outstanding; each investor owns 240,000 shares of common stock. The 20% dilution in value of each share, however, results in the stock price falling to $83.33. Here’s the important part: the company (and our investors) are still in the exact same position. Instead of owning 200,000 shares at $100, they now own 240,000 shares at $83.33. The company’s market capitalization is still $100 million.

A stock split is, in essence, a very large stock dividend. In cases of stock splits, a company may double, triple or quadruple the number of shares outstanding. The value of each share is merely lowered; economic reality does not change at all. It is, therefore, completely irrational for investors to get excited over stock splits. If you do not still fully understand this, you must read How to Think About Share Price. It will clear up any lingering confusion.

One of the more interesting theories of corporate dividend policy is that managements should opt for stock dividends over all other kinds. This will allow investors that want their earnings retained in the business (and not taxed) to hold on to the additional stock paid out to them. Investors that want current income, on the other hand, can sell the shares they receive from the stock dividend, pay the tax and pocket the cash - in essence, creating a “do-it-yourself” dividend


5 of 9Previous NextCorporate Dividend Policy, Dividend Payout Ratio, and Dividend Yield

The dividend payout ratio is important because its inverse, the retained earnings ratio, allows you to calculate a stock's maximum sustainable growth rate by multiplying it by the return on equity.

.Are high dividends good or bad? The answer depends upon your personality, financial circumstances and the business itself.
In Determining Dividend Payout: When Should Companies Pay Dividends?, you learned that, “a company should only pay dividends if it is unable to reinvest its cash at a higher rate than the shareholders (owners) of the business would be able to if the money was in their hands. If company ABC is earning 25% on equity with no debt, management should retain all of the earnings because the average investor probably won't find another company or investment that is yielding that kind of return.”

At the same time, an investor may require cash income for living expenses. In these cases, he is not interested in long-term appreciation of shares; he wants a check with which he can pay the bills.


Dividend Payout Ratio
The percentage of net income that is paid out in the form of dividend is known as the dividend payout ratio. This ratio is important in projecting the growth of company because its inverse, the retention ratio (the amount not paid out to shareholders in the form of dividends), can help project a company’s growth.

Calculating Dividend Payout Ratio
Coca-Cola’s 2003 cash flow statement shows that the company paid $2.166 billion in dividends to shareholders. The income statement for the same year shows the business had reported a net income of $4.347 billion. To calculate the divided payout ratio, the investor would do the following:
$2,166,000,000 dividends paid
---------(divided by)---------
$4,347,000,000 reported net income

The answer, 49.8%, tells the investor that Coca-Cola paid out nearly fifty percent of its profit to shareholders over the course of the year.


Dividend Yield
The dividend yield tells the investor how much he is earning on a common stock from the dividend alone based on the current market price. Dividend yield is calculated by dividing the actual or indicated annual dividend by the current price per share.
The Washington Post pays an annual dividend of $7 and trades at $910 per share; Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris) pays an annual dividend of $2.72 and trades at $49.75 per share. By calculating dividend yield, the investor can compare the amount he would earn in cash income annually from each security.

Washington Post Dividend Yield Calculation
$7.00
----(divided by)----
$910

= 0.0077 or 0.77%

Altria Group Dividend Yield Calculation
$2.72
----(divided by)----
$49.75

= 0.055 or 5.5%

In other words, despite the fact that the Washington Post pays a higher per-share dividend, $100,000 invested in its common stock would yield only $770 in annual income as opposed to the same amount invested in Altria Group which would yield $5,500. An investor interested in dividend income and not capital gains should opt for the latter, all else being equal.


6 of 9Previous NextThe Dividend Tax Debate

The IRS taxes dividends twice: Once when the company earns the money, and again when paid out to stockholders! In other countries, companies get a tax deduction to encourage managements to reward owners instead of building empires on their dime.

Will Terry, Getty Images
.Dividends, like interest, are taxed at a person’s individual tax rate. Capital gain taxes, on the other hand, are assessed according to the length of time an investor held his investment and can be as low as half the rate levied on dividends income. This difference in tax treatment is another reason many investors opt for long-term equity holdings that reinvest capital into the business instead of paying it out in the form of a dividend; by avoiding the double-taxation, they can compound their wealth at a faster rate.
There is a significant dividend tax political controversy. The corporation paid income taxes on the profit it earned (original tax). The owners of the business then take that profit out for their personal use in the form of a dividend and are taxed at personal income tax rates (second tax). In effect, they have paid the government twice.

The proponents of the dividend tax argue that the wealthy, by definition, own significantly more investments than the poor. Therefore, it would be possible for someone to earn billions of dollars in dividend income and not pay a dime in Federal taxes. This, they say, is inherently unfair. The gap between the rich and the poor would explode over


7 .Selecting High Dividend Stocks

Selecting high dividend paying stocks is an art and science. By putting together a portfolio of dividend stocks, you can use the regular income to spend or to grow your business. Here are some of the stocks at my company, Kennon Green Enterprises.

Joshua Kennon, Kennon Green Enterprises
.Selecting high dividend stocks
An investor desiring to put together a portfolio that generates high dividend income should place great scrutiny on a company’s dividend payment history. Only those corporations with a continuous record of steadily increasing dividends over the past twenty years or longer should be considered for inclusion. Furthermore, the investor should be convinced the company can continue to generate the cash flow necessary to make the dividend payments; a handgun manufacturer, for example, may have a long history of high dividend payments while generating strong cash flow from operations yet not make a good investment because it faces litigation which, if successful, will bankrupt the business.

Dividends related to cash flow - not reported earnings
This brings up an important point: dividends are dependent upon cash flow, not reported earnings. Almost any Board of Directors would still declare and pay a dividend if cash flow was strong but the company reported a net loss on a GAAP basis. The reason is simple: investors that prefer high dividend stocks look for stability. A company that lowers its dividend is probably going to experience a decline in stock price as jittery investors take their money elsewhere. Companies will not raise the dividend rate because of one successful year; so afraid are they of lowering the dividend they will wait the business is capable of generating the cash to maintain the higher dividend payment forever. Likewise, they will not lower the dividend if they think the company is facing a temporary problem.

Debt restrictions
Many companies are not able to pay dividends because bank loans, lines of credit or other debt financing places strict limitations on the payment of common stock dividends. This type of covenant restriction is disclosed in a company’s 10K filing with the SEC.

8 of 9Previous NextDividend Reinvestment Plans or DRIPs

When you use direct stock purchase plans, dividend reinvestment plans, or DRIPs, you pay little or no commission. This leaves more cash in your pocket. Wall Street doesn't advertise these programs because if you use them, it loses the fee income.

.Unless you need the money for living expenses or you are an experienced investor that regularly allocates capital, the first thing you should do when you acquire a stock that pays a dividend is enroll it in a dividend reinvestment plan, or DRIP for short.
How dividend reinvestment plans work
When an investor enrolls in a dividend reinvestment plan, he will no longer receive dividends in the mail or directly deposited into his brokerage account. Instead, those dividends will be used to purchase additional shares of stock in the company that paid the dividend. There are several advantages to investing in DRIPs; they are:
Benefits of enrolling in a dividend reinvestment plan

•Enrolling in a DRIP is easy. The paperwork (both online and in print) can normally be filled out in under one minute.
•Dividends are automatically reinvested. Once the investor has enrolled in a DRIP, the process becomes entirely automated and requires no more attention or monitoring.
•Many dividend reinvestment plans are often part of a direct stock purchase plan. If the investor holds at least one of his shares directly, he can have his checking or savings account automatically debited on a regular basis to purchase additional shares of stock.
•Purchases through dividend reinvestment programs are normally subject to little or no commission.
•Dividend reinvestment plans allow the investor to purchase fractional shares. Over decades, this can result in significantly more wealth in the investor's hands.
•An investor can enroll only a limited number of shares in the dividend reinvestment plan and continue to receive cash dividends on the remaining shares.
In fact, I like dividend reinvestment programs so much that I once wrote an essay for my friends explaining how my family had used the Coca-Cola dividend reinvestment plan to teach my youngest sister how to invest in stock. It became a learning experience so that by the time she reached high school, she understood the relationship between business, profits, dividends and investors

9 of 9Previous NextPractical Examples of Dividend Reinvestment Plans in Action

Direct stock purchase plans and DRIPs make it easy to compound your wealth because you can setup automatic investment plans that take money from your bank account to buy shares regularly. Dividends can be reinvested at little or no cost.

Javier Romero, Getty Images
.Full enrollment in a DRIP Jane Smith owns 1,000 shares of Coca-Cola. The stock currently trades at $50 per share and the annual dividend is $0.88 per share. The quarterly dividend has just been paid ($0.88 divided by 4 times a year = $0.22 per share quarterly dividend). Before she enrolled in Coca-Cola’s dividend reinvestment plan, Jane would normally receive a cash deposit of $220 in her brokerage account. This quarter, however, she logs into her brokerage account and finds she now has 1,004.40 shares of Coca-Cola. The $220 dividend that was normally paid to her was reinvested in whole and fractional shares of the company at $50 per share.
Partial enrollment in a DRIP William Jones owns 500,000 shares of Altria group. The stock currently trades at $49.75 and pays an indicated annual dividend of $2.72 per share ($0.68 per quarter). William would like to receive some cash for living expenses but would like to enroll some of the shares in a DRIP. He calls his broker and has 300,000 shares enrolled in Altria’s DRIP.

When the quarterly dividend is paid, William will receive cash dividends of $136,000. He will also receive 4,100.50 additional shares of Altria Group giving him holdings of 304,100.50 shares (300,000 shares * $0.68 dividend = $204,000 divided by $49.75 per share price = 4,100.50 new shares of Altria Group).


Dividends on dividends
Why are dividend reinvestment plans conducive to wealth building? Notice that William now has 4,100.50 additional shares of Altria stock. When the next quarterly dividend is paid, he will receive $0.68 for each of those shares. That additional income works out to $2,788.34. Those dividends will be partially reinvested in the stock, buying more shares which will pay more dividends.
In even the smallest portfolio, dividend reinvestment plans can result in substantial increases in value over extended periods of time. To demonstrate the power of dividend reinvestment through DRIPs, consider the example given in Jerry Edgerton and Jim Frederick’s August 1, 1997 Money magazine article, Build Your Wealth Drip by Drip: if you had put $10,000 in Standard & Poors 500 stock index at the end of 1985 and not bothered to reinvest your dividends, you would have had $29,150 by the end of 1995. Had you reinvested the dividends, however, your total would have been more than $40,000.

In other words, reinvesting those seemingly-small dividends resulted in an extra $10,850 over ten years. Assuming you continued to add to your principal investment and held those stocks for thirty or forty years, the difference could be hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.


More Information - Our Ultimate Guide to Dividend Investing
You're now ready to move on to our Ultimate Guide to Dividend Investing. There, you'll learn advanced dividend strategies, how to avoid dividend traps, how to use dividend yields to tell if stocks are undervalued, and much more

How to Utilize the Berkshire Hathaway Wealth Model in Your Own Life

One of the least understood secrets behind the success of Berkshire Hathaway and its rise from an $8 stock in the 1960’s to more than $118,000 per share today, is that Warren Buffett focuses on two value “buckets” as he put it in a recent shareholder letter. The first bucket consists of the operating businesses in which the company holds a controlling stake and the second of marketable securities such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, et cetera, most of which are held through the insurance subsidiaries such as GEICO, General Re, or National Indemnity, just to name a few.
This arrangement provides several major advantages to Berkshire Hathaway. First, when stocks collapse, Buffett is able to rely on the cash generated by the operating businesses to provide him with funds to redeploy into the market, buying up assets on the cheap. If he were running a mutual fund, this would not be the case and as the value of his holdings fell, Warren would be forced to sell something that was already undervalued to buy something that was even more undervalued. Second, the operating businesses are insulated from daily valuations (except to the extent that the parent holding company is publicly traded), giving it a much more stable net worth and estimated private market value than a mutual fund would have. Thus, banks are more likely to loan on a long-term, fixed-rate basis to a stable business with real assets such as factories, retail stores, computers, and such than they would be on a portfolio of stocks representing shares of those same companies.

In your own life, you are likely to find that it is considerably easier to raise your net worth quickly when focusing on both of these, taking the same “double barrel” approach Buffett and his long-time business partner, Munger, have made a cornerstone of their empire.

For most people, their primary “operating business” would be their day job. Whether you are a teacher, firefighter, accountant, or part-time babysitter, it is this stream of funds that allows you to pay your bills, watch television, buy groceries, and put gas in your car. It is also this income that provides you with your first real capital to acquire investments.

Just like any good business, you want to grow your profits, or in this case salary, wages, and other income from the job, as much as possible with the smallest investment. Thus, if your choices are working more hours to make more money or going back to school to become a doctor, you might opt for the latter due to the much higher earnings down the road by putting in a comparable amount of double and triple-shifts. This leads to a golden rule of wealth building: You must invest in yourself if you want to experience true financial freedom. This means gaining new skills and turning those skills into monetary gain. Only a few days ago, I read a story in a newspaper about a homemaker that has gotten so good at coupon clipping, she can cut a $150 grocery bill down to $40 – keep in mind, that since food is bought with after-tax income, these results are exponentially more impressive than they may appear.

The reality is that those with specialized skills such as heart surgeons, auto mechanics, dentists, plumbers, and fluent speakers of Mandarin Chinese are not being left out of the global economy. Virtually all of us have the potential to add some of these unique skill sets to our vocational toolbox, but the notion that you are going to be able to graduate from high school with nothing more than a diploma, get a job for life, and retire well is naïve. The genie is out of the bottle in the world of globalization and nothing could reverse that (even if the U.S. were to enact massive trade protections, we would experience horrific recession or depression and China and India would eclipse us at an even faster pace


Once you have your primary career on track and are investing in your own skills, it might be time to acquire or establish other operating businesses. For some, this could mean building storage units or car washes. For others, it might include starting a lawn mowing service. One member of my family has a career as a flight attendant, production manager at an embroidery company, and then owns a diaper cake design business on the side. She lives off her salary as a manager, using the other two jobs mostly as pure investment capital to ensure that she has millions of dollars in wealth by her forties despite having an average income and supporting a family.
This is where you really have an opportunity to generate cash doing something you love. When adding these other operating businesses, you should strive to find things that make you “tap dance” to work, to borrow a phrase from Buffett. Let’s say you are 25 years old and manage to sell paintings or perform magic at birthday parties and weddings, generating an extra $96 per week (roughly $5,000 per year). That might not seem like a lot but it’s going to add up to $9,266,500+ by the time you are Warren Buffett’s age if you park it in a Roth IRA and manage to generate the historical 11% rate of return the S&P has brought in for its owners over the long-haul. That’s not a joke. By doing something you love, and putting that money into cash generating assets, you can retire rich. As for the bigger house, car, X-Box, and other stuff you want along the way, that’s why you work your primary job and keep investing in your skills. (If you don’t have time for a second job or activity, remember our homemaker who saved more than $110 a week on groceries? That would be more than enough to achieve the same results.)

As you generate cash, you are going to want to have it invested in the most tax-efficient manner possible. That means taking advantage of your 401k, and an individual retirement account such as a Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, or SEP-IRA just to name a few. Here, if wisely and prudently invested, those funds can blossom into a torrent of capital gains, dividends, and interest, all of which is plowed back in to generate even more profits. If the stock market falls, you can take advantage of your operating businesses to dollar cost average your positions, thus taking advantage of the basic principles of value investing.





Dollar cost averaging

IT is a technique designed to reduce market risk through the systematic purchase of securities at predetermined intervals and set amounts. Many successful investors already practice without realizing it. Many others could save themselves a lot of time, effort and money by beginning a plan. In this article, you will learn the three steps to beginning a dollar cost averaging plan, look at concrete examples of how it can lower an investor’s cost basis, and discover how it reduces risk.

Dollar Cost Averaging: What is It?
Instead of investing assets in a lump sum, the investor works his way into a position by slowly buying smaller amounts over a longer period of time. This spreads the cost basis out over several years, providing insulation against changes in market price.

Setting Up Your Own Dollar Cost Averaging Plan
In order to begin a dollar cost averaging plan, you must do three things:

1.Decide exactly how much money you can invest each month. Make certain that you are financially capable of keeping the amount consistent; otherwise the plan will not be as effective.
2.Select an investment (index funds are particularly appropriate, but we will get to that in a moment) that you want to hold for the long term, preferably five to ten years or longer.
3.At regular intervals (weekly, monthly or quarterly works best), invest that money into the security you’ve chosen. If your broker offers it, set up an automatic withdrawal plan so the process becomes automated.
An Example of a Dollar Cost Averaging Plan
You have $15,000 you want to invest in Sprint FON common stock. The date is January 1, 2000. You have two options: you can invest the money as a lump sum now, walk away and forget about it, or you can set up a dollar cost averaging plan and ease your way into the stock. You opt for the latter and decide to invest $1,250 each quarter for three years. (See chart for math of dollar cost averaging plan.)
Had you invested your $15,000 in January 2000, you would have purchased 264.46 shares at $56.72 each. When the stock closed for the year in December of 2002 at $13.69, your holdings would only be worth $3,620!

Had you dollar cost averaged into the stock over the past three years, however, you would own 746.21 shares; at the closing price, this gives your holdings a market value of $10,216. Although still a loss, Sprint FON stock must only go up to $20.10 for you to break even, not $56.72, which would have been required without the dollar cost averaging.

To go a step further, without dollar cost averaging you would break even at $56.72. With dollar cost averaging, you would have turned a profit of $27,326 when the stock hit that price thanks to your lower cost basis ($56.72 sell price - $20.10 average cost basis = $36.62 profit x 746.21 shares = $27,326 total profit.)


Combining the Power of Dollar Cost Averaging with the Diversification of a Mutual Fund
Index funds are passively managed mutual funds that are designed to mimic the returns of benchmarks such as the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, etc. An investor that puts money into a fund designed to mimic the Wilshire 5000, for example, is literally going to own a fractional interest in every one of the five thousand stocks that make up that index. This instant diversification comes with the added bonus. Traditionally, management fees of passive funds are less than one-tenth those of their actively managed counterparts. Over the course of a decade, for example, this can add up to tens of thousands of dollars the investor would have paid in fees to the mutual fund company that, instead, are accruing to his or her benefit.
The dollar cost averaging component reduces market risk, while the index fund investment reduces company-specific risk. This combination can be among the best investment options for individuals looking to build up their long term wealth by having a portion of their portfolio in equities.

Table 1: Sprint FON with Dollar Cost Averaging Plan
Invest date Amount Price per share Shares purchased
Jan. 2000 $1,250 $56.72 22.04
Apr. 2000 $1,250 $54.19 23.07
Jul. 2000 $1,250 $31.34 39.27
Oct. 2000 $1,250 $22.60 53.31
Jan. 2001 $1,250 $22.10 56.50
Apr. 2001 $1,250 $19.05 65.62
Oct. 2001 $1,250 $18.13 68.95
Jan. 2002 $1,250 $16.14 77.45
Apr. 2002 $1,250 $14.58 85.73
Jul. 2002 $1,250 $8.66 144.34
Oct. 2002 $1,250 $11.64 107.39
Total $15,000 $20.10 avg. 746.21



DIVIDEND INVESTING
New investors often want to know: If a stock doesn't pay dividends, isn't buying it like participating in a Ponzi scheme because your return depends on what the next guy in line is willing to pay for your shares? That is a very good question and it's important you understand the answer.
To help you really get down into the details and understand non-dividend paying stocks, I created a story that will make this topic easy to grasp. Don't forget, though, that dividends are a great source of return for shareholders, especially when combined with dollar cost averaging. Investing in non-dividend paying stocks should be the exception, not the rule.


American Apple Orchards, Inc.
Imagine that your father and your uncle decide that they want to start a farming business. They each contribute $150,000 of their savings to a new company, "American Apple Orchards, Inc." They file the paperwork with the Secretary of State, get a business license, and go down to the local bank to deposit the $300,000 in cash. They divide the company into 100,000 pieces ("shares") at $3 per share, each man receiving half of the stock for his contribution. At this point, nothing has changed. (They have a company with no assets other than the $300,000 they contributed to it. They then cut that company into 100,000 pieces. Therefore, each of those pieces represents $3 worth of cash in the bank account because $300,000 divided by 100,000 shares = $3 book value per share.)
The new company uses the $300,000 to secure a $700,000 business loan. This gives them $1,000,000 in cash and $700,000 in debt with a $300,000 net worth (consisting of their original contribution to the company).

The company buys 300 acres of good farmland at $2,500 per acre ($750,000 total), and uses the remaining $250,000 for equipment, working capital, and start-up costs.

The first year, the farm generates $43,000 in pre-tax operating profit. After taxes, this amounts to $30,000.

At the end of the year, your father and uncle are sitting at the kitchen table, holding the Board of Directors meeting for American Apple Orchards, Inc. They see that the annual report the accountant prepared shows $300,000 in shareholder equity at the beginning, with a $30,000 net profit, for $330,000 ending shareholder equity.

In other words, for all of their effort, they earned $30,000 on their $300,000 investment. (Note: Instead of cash, however, the assets consist of farm land, apple trees, tractors, stationary, etc.) That is a 10% return on book value. If interest rates are 4% at the time, this is a good return. Not only did your family earn a good return on their investment, but your father and uncle got to live their dream by farming apples.

Being older men, and wise in the ways of the world, your father and uncle realize that the accountant left something out of the annual report. (It's not the accountant's fault; the GAAP accounting rules don't allow him to put it in the figures.) What is it? Real estate appreciation.

If inflation ran 3%, the farm land probably kept pace, meaning that the appreciation was $22,500. In other words, if they sold their farm at the end of the year, they would get $772,500, not the $750,000 they paid, generating a gain on real estate of $22,500. GAAP accounting rules don't allow this to show up anywhere. That's important to understand.

This means that the $300,000 they originally contributed to the company has grown to $330,000 due to the $30,000 in profits they earned after tax on their apple sales. Yet, they are also $22,500 richer due to the higher value of their land, which won't be included due to accounting rules. That means their real return for the year was roughly $52,500, or 17.5%. (To be fair, you would have to back out deferred taxes for the money that would be owed if they were to sell the land but I'll keep it simple.)


The Choice They Face: To Pay Dividends or Reinvest in the Company?
Now, your father and uncle have a choice. They have a business that has $330,000 in book value but that they know is worth $352,500 ($300,000 contributed capital + $30,000 net profit + $22,500 appreciation in land). So, the accountant says their shares are worth $33.00 each ($330,000 divided by 100,000 pieces). They know their stock is worth $35.20 per share ($352,000 divided by 100,000 pieces).
They have a choice. Do they pay the $30,000 in cash they earned out as a $0.30 per share dividend ($30,000 net income divided by 100,000 shares = $0.30 per share dividend)? Or, do they turn around and pour that $30,000 back into the business to expand? If the orchard can earn 10% on capital again next year, profits should increase to $33,000. Compared to the 4% the local bank pays, wouldn't they be better off not paying out that money as a cash dividend and instead going for the 10% return?


Compounding That Dividend Decision for 20 Years
Imagine that this conversation happens every year for 20 years. Each year, your father and uncle decide to reinvest the profit instead of paying a cash dividend, and each year they earn 10% on capital. The real estate also appreciates 3% per year. The entire time, they never issue, buy, or sell a new share of stock.
On the company's 20th year anniversary, net income is going to be $201,800. Book value, representing profits poured back into the company for expansion, would have grown from $300,000 to $2,000,000. On top of that $2,000,000, though, is the real estate. The land would have appreciated $605,000 from the first day of operation, not one penny of which has ever shown up anywhere in the financial statements. Thus, the book value of the company is $2,000,000 but the true value of the business is at least $2,605,000.

From a book value perspective, the shares are worth $20 each ($2,000,000 book value divided by 100,000 shares). From a "real" value perspective, factoring in the value of the land, the shares are worth $26.05 each ($2,605,000 divided by 100,000 shares).

If the company were to pay out 100% of its profits in cash dividends, cash dividends would be just shy of $2.02 per share ($201,800 net profit for the year divided by 100,000 shares = $2.02 per share cash dividends

In practical terms, that means that the $300,000 your father and uncle invested into American Apple Orchards, Inc. when it was founded 20 years ago has grown to $2,605,000. In addition, the company generates $201,800 in net income each year. A reasonable, fair valuation of the stock when factoring in real estate appreciation is $26.05 per share.

Putting It Together
You want nothing more than to go into business with your father. You decide to approach your uncle and offer to buy his 50,000 shares, representing 50% of the business.
In the 20 years since the company has existed, not a single penny has been paid out to the stockholders as a cash dividend. Would you seriously go to your uncle and offer him the $3 he put in for his shares when the company started instead of the $26.05 value of the shares now?

In other words, if you paid $1,302,500 for 50% of a $2,605,000 farm, do you really think you'd feel like you were part of a Ponzi scheme because the money had been reinvested over the years? Of course not. Your money represents real assets and earning power and you know that if you wanted to, you could vote to stop growth and start distributing profits as dividends in the future. Even though you haven't actually seen that money yet, it has represented a real, and tangible, gain in net worth for your family.

On Wall Street, the same holds true for huge companies. Take Berkshire Hathaway. The stock has gone from $8 to more than $100,000 per share over 40+ years because Warren Buffett has reinvested the profits into other investments. When he took over, the company owned nothing but some unprofitable textile mills. Today, Berkshire owns 13.1% of American Express, 8.6% of Coca-Cola, 5.7% of ConocoPhillips, 1.1% of Johnson & Johnson, 8.9% of Kraft Foods, 3.1% of Procter & Gamble, 4.3% of U.S. Bancorp, 0.5% of Wal-Mart Stores, 18.4% of The Washington Post, 7.2% of Wells Fargo, and totally controls GEICO, Dairy Queen, MidAmerican Energy, Helzburg Diamonds, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Benjamin Moore Paints, NetJets, See's Candies, and much more. That doesn't even include the fact that the holding company just spent $44 billion to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

Is Berkshire worth $102,000+ per share? Absolutely. Even if it doesn't pay out those earnings now, it has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets that could be sold, and generates tens of billions of dollars in profit each year. That has value, even if the shareholders don't get the benefit in the form of cash, because the Board of Directors could literally turn on the spigot and start paying massive dividends tomorrow.

In developed nations, with strong financial markets, the stock market will recognize this gain in value by rewarding a company with a higher stock price. Of course, this is irregular and can take years. But if you bought $8,000 worth of Berkshire back in the day, your 1,000 shares are now worth $100,000,000. If you desired, you could sell off several million dollars worth of stock, or put the shares in a brokerage account and take a small margin loan against them, to fund your lifestyle needs. In effect, you could "create your own" dividend.

You could also donate your shares to a charitable remainder trust that will take your Berkshire, pay you a set return of, say, 5% per year, and then donate all of the stock to your favorite charity when you die. This is a do-it-yourself dividend method.