August 2019 Update

The market had significant bouts of volatility this month triggered by some weaker than expected earnings reports – though the consumer still is spending, continuing yield curve inversion – but I remain uncertain as to the weight that should be factored into this, the ongoing tariff whiplash coupled with all the pronouncements of terrific trade deals that seem to whither on the vine, increased international tensions with Russia and Iran having failed military tests and yesterday’s Russian incursion into Georgia. This list doesn’t even include European economic weakness centered in Germany. With all this, the S&P lost some ground dropping 1.84% while my portfolio lost 0.34%. For the year, I’m outperforming the benchmark by 2.5%.

As a reminder to the older readers and a refresher to my newer ones, I am technically in the distribution phase of my investing career – meaning I have minimal new cash (other than self-generated dividends) being deployed. Other than RMDs (required minimum distributions – coming from an account I exclude from this report and are not reinvested in the market), what is reflected is basically a result of market valuation. For August, total cash invested was less than 0.00% of the portfolio value even when rounding generously. The source of funds being accrued (non-reinvested) dividends (42.0%), new cash (49.4%) and reinvested dividends (8.6%. Basically for the month, over half my purchases were funded by the snowball resulting in an even larger forthcoming dividend stream.

PORTFOLIO UPDATES

• increased my BLK position
• new position MFG (Japan)
• new position ERIC (Sweden)
• new position G (Bermuda)
• new position CSCO

DIVIDENDS

My primary focus resides on dividends with the goal being a rising flow on an annual basis.

• August delivered an increase of 13.89% Y/Y.
• Dividend increases averaged 10.2% with 58.59% of the portfolio delivering at least one increase (including 4 cuts). This is off last years’ pace and I believe a new personal record for dividend cuts in a single year since about 1980.
• 2019 Dividends received were 71.11% of 2018 total dividends putting me on target to exceed last year’s total in late October. The YTD run rate is 108.5% of 2018, slightly under my 110.0% goal – but still recoverable and an improvement over last month.

Note: I updated my Goals page to provide a visual of these numbers.  Based on Mr All Things Money’s instruction set with a conversion to percentages.  My code only updates when the monthly Y/Y number is exceeded.  Otherwise, the prior year actual is used.

SPINOFFs

On Oct 4, 2018 MSG filed a confidential Form 10 to spin the sports business which remains in progress.

MERGERS

XRX merger with Fujifilm cancelled (still being litigated). Pending settlement expected in September.

TSS to merge into GPN (all stock, .8101 sh GPN for each TSS sh) estimated to complete in October – Upon the announcement, I was prepared to sell my TSS position to book almost a triple in just over 4 years as GPN currently pays only a penny per share dividend per quarter. However, page 14 of their slideshow states: Dividend – maintain TSYS’ dividend yield. This would appear to indicate an increase in GPN’s dividend, so for now I’ll hold.

PB to acquire LTXB for 0.528 shares and $6.28 cash for each LTXB share. I plan to vote in favor of the transaction (on both sides), pocket the cash and sell the new shares – retaining the old and perhaps use some of the cash to purchase additional PB shares post-merger.

VLY to acquire ORIT for 1.6 sh VLY to 1 ORIT. This merger will result in a slight dividend cut November forward as the rate will be normalized to VLY’s current rate. In my view, the other positives outweigh this negative.

PBCT to aquire UBNK for .875 sh PBCT to 1 UBNK. I plan to hold this one as I wouldn’t be surprised if PBCT gets taken out at come point.

Spirit MTA REIT (SMTA) will vote on Sept. 4th to approve the sale of most assets to HPT for cash. A second vote will be held to liquidate the REIT. If approved in total, this would be a profitable outcome for one of my most speculative positions.

The three banks continue to validate my strategy of bank consolidations from a few years ago. The only flaw (so far) was the holding period required – but dividends were received while waiting.

SUMMARY

Overall, no complaints. It appears the pending mergers/liquidation might provide enough of a premium to improve my performance over the index, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself yet. I still see a little consolidation in my holdings through the last half of the year and migrating to a slightly risk off stance, offset slightly by companies with compelling stories. My cash position still remains slightly above mean as I do expect further volatility.

Here’s hoping your month was successful!