I often come across fancy Dividend calendars for US based companies but have rarely seen any for Canadian stocks. Few days ago I even read someone enquiring about the same on a Facebook group which made me think – it shouldn’t be that difficult to come up with a quick list and stick them on a slide, may take 30 minutes tops. But it seems nothing is straightforward and when I started working on it, it took about 4 hours! This makes me wonder how some people keep churning quality article after articles at quick succession! It took me longer as I wanted to spend some time telling the thought process behind the list, the calendars I have seen normally don’t talk about the selection process or criteria behind the list, hence I also added a quick write-up. Please pardon the lack of creative juice and imagination, the calendar turned up quite vanilla! Selection criteria was quite simple and straightforward. The list comprises of:
- Quarterly dividend payers (duh!!) with long and credible history of dividend payments as well as growth
- Diverse sectors where most of the companies are leaders by market cap in their respective sectors (highlighted in bold font)
Since the calendar comprises only of quarterly payers, 4 companies should have been sufficient for this calendar. But as I also wanted to diversify, I first went with 12 companies, one for each month and then I ended up with 16 companies as I couldn’t decide one over another! I used CDASL Sept’20 spreadsheet for come up with the initial list based on market capital, dividend streak, growth and chowder rule; Google Finance for the latest price, Marketbeat and Company’s Investor relations pages for Dividend schedule and amounts.
Below table shows if you have $10,000 to spend and you spread them amongst these 16 companies, it would be $625 (or 6.25% allocation) for each company. The table also shows how many shares you will be able to buy for each of the company at last recorded price. To keep it simple I am not considering any commission paid but you can add roughly $160 for commission at $10 per trade. Total annual dividend earned on $10,000 will be about $290, meaning dividend yield would be 2.9%, not considering any growth or ad-hoc bonuses. I captured below information in this google sheet as well.
Few additional points about above table:
- The Dividend used is current and do not consider any upcoming raise or ad-hoc bonuses
- Waste Connections, Thomson Reuters, Opentext & Algonquin Power pays their dividend in USD and hence the actual payout amount will fluctuate a bit based on prevailing conversion
My belief is one shouldn’t consider buying into a company based on their dividend schedule, instead one should focus on good companies. All the companies mentioned in my calendar are solid stocks with great history. If you are living out of dividend money and require regular withdrawals then also planning and budgeting for it would be better than relying on company paying in a specific month. There is a wise saying that you should have 3 months of your expenses as liquid emergency fund, so letting dividends accumulate and have money parked in High interest savings account would be a good idea. In coming days I plan to work on a similar calendar for monthly paying stocks and you can subscribe using below link to get an email notification.
Happy Investing and Good luck with whatever you buy!