Month 130 - 11 Bedrock DRIPs: Dividend Achievers in the Dow Jones Composite Average - May 2022

Situation: This is an update of last April’s blog about dollar-cost averaging (Month 118). Those 10 Dividend ReInvestment Plans were chosen on the basis of fundamental metrics. Since then, I’ve decided to place more emphasis on safety than fundamentals. (When the price of a stock collapses, you might give up on the idea of automatically buying more shares each month.) 

If safety is what’s needed to keep you from giving up on dollar-averaging, how is that achieved? Let’s confine our stock-picking inside a Venn diagram of three safe fences: 1) the 65-stock Dow Jones Composite Average, 2) Vanguard Group’s list of Dividend Achievers (VIG), and 3) companies that issue bonds rated A- or higher by S&P. 

Mission: Apply our Standard Spreadsheet to a core list of companies that warrant automatic investment by using these restrictions.

Execution: see Table of 11 DRIPs. Note that 7 of those were on last year’s list of 10 DRIPs (UNP, MSFT, NEE, JNJ, KO, JPM, WMT).

Analysis: Warren Buffett’s favorite metric is addressed in Column R of the Table: Return on Tangible Capital Employed. He thinks anything over 20% for the last fiscal year (lfy) is a good number, and 4 companies meet that standard: MSFT, PG, JNJ, UPS. His second point (that the company is “run by able and honest managers”) is addressed in Morningstar reports (see Column AM) and is negatively impacted by the degree to which managers capitalize their company by issuing long-term bonds instead of common stock (see Column W). Only one company (MSFT) has a BUY rating from Morningstar but 5 have a Debt:Equity ratio less than 1.0 (NKE, MSFT, PG, JNJ, WMT). Mr. Buffett has also stated that a high Free Cash Flow Yield (Column I) reflects good management because Retained Earnings allow the company to expand (or pay down debt) at zero cost. 10 companies (NKE, UNP, MSFT, PG, JNJ, KO, JPM, WMT, UPS, CAT) have Free Cash Flow remaining after dividends. His third point (that the stock be available “at a sensible price”) is addressed by the 1-yr and 5-yr Forward PEG ratios (see Columns M and N): Only one company has PEGs under 2.0 at both time points (CAT). MSFT is cited 4 times.

Bottom Line: Dollar-cost averaging, over time, prevents you from either overpaying or underpaying for building a position. It does this by forcing you to buy shares when to do so appears unwise. By doing so, you get a larger number of shares for your monthly investment than would otherwise be the case.

Risk Rating: 5 (where 10-yr US Treasury Notes = 1, S&P 500 Index = 5, and gold bullion = 10)

Full Disclosure: I dollar-average into all 11 companies.

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