November 2023 Dividend Stock Purchases

As I'm writing this blog post, it's already December 4th. The weather remains uncharacteristically warm for this time of year here in Central Wisconsin. It's also my nephew's 9th birthday today, which really drives home the idea that the older you get, the more time flies (it seems like just yesterday, he was a baby).

Now that the month of November is over, it is time to go over my stock purchases/sale activity for that period.

My first sale of the month was all 64 shares of Medical Properties Trust (MPW) at $4.81 a share. This reduced my net annual forward dividends by $38.40. My decision to sell out of MPW was based largely on this analysis from Dividend Sensei. For the sake of brevity, MPW has significant maturities that are coming due soon. This could force the company to cut its dividend once again to preserve liquidity, which could lead to significant underperformance moving forward as well.

The other sale for November was all six shares of MMM (MMM) at $99.10 a share. That lowered my net annual forward dividends by $36. As Dividend Sensei explained, mounting legal costs and a diminishing growth outlook could result in an eventual dividend cut from MMM. Besides some rare exceptions like Energy Transfer in 2020, dividend or distribution cuts tend to lead to poor investment results. I'm basically trying to get out ahead of a potential cut from MMM and redeploy proceeds into a more fundamentally strong and stable high-yielder.

That brings me to my purchase of 25 shares of MPLX LP (MPLX) at an average cost of $36.22 a share. This purchase added $85 to my net annual forward distributions, which equates to a 9.39% distribution yield. The impetus for this investment decision and my investment research that followed was again thanks to Dividend Sensei's recent article.

Concluding Thoughts:

My investment decisions for November boosted my net annual forward distributions by $10.60. More importantly, I believe that the objective quality of my portfolio improved from these transactions.

Combined with the $11.28 in dividend increases that I received during the month, my net annual forward dividends surged from nearly $4,260 to start the month to $4,280 by the end of it.

Discussion:

How was your November 2023 for capital deployment?

Did you sell any stocks as I did during the month?

Thanks for your readership and please leave your thoughts below!