One Raise at a Time | Iron Mountain

Getting a pay raise while sitting on the couch?  Sign me up!  Thanks Iron Mountain for the dividend increase!

Something I love about dividend growth investing is that each month I get to hear about companies I own deciding to pay me more money in dividends.  Just for owning a small portion of said companies.  Not going and doing R&D for new products or technology.  Not selling any products.  Not managing any employees or inventory.  Not making sales calls.  All I had to do was have the foresight to invest some of my savings in excellent companies.  That's dividend growth investing at work!  I mean who doesn't like getting a raise for doing nothing?  Dividend growth investing is far from a get rich quick investment strategy, rather you need to remain focused on the long term goal to be successful.

It sure is great to wake up to a dividend increase first thing in the morning.  The Board of Directors at Iron Mountain (IRM) approved an increase in their quarterly dividend payment.  The dividend was increased from $0.5875 per share up to $0.611.  That's a solid 4.0% increase.  Iron Mountain is a Dividend Challenger with 8 consecutive years of dividend growth.  Shares currently yield 7.58% based on the new annualized payout.

The new dividend will be payable on January 3, 2019 to shareholders of record as of December 17, 2018.

Since I own 28 shares of Iron Mountain in my FI Portfolio this raise increased my forward 12-month dividends by $2.63.  This is the 1st dividend increase I've received from Iron Mountain since initiating a position earlier this month.  

A full screen version of this chart can be found here.

Iron Mountain's dividend growth might be a bit on the low side; however, I'm more than happy with 4-5% growth with a yield over 7%.  This is a bit more of a speculative play for me since I typically don't target yields this high; although I think this will turn out just fine in the long run.  If you work for any big company chances are that Iron Mountain is the document storage solution for your company.  Plus Iron Mountain is transitioning the business model into some higher growth areas such as data centers and as well as the emerging markets.

The 1-, 3- and 5-year rolling dividend growth rates since 2008 can be found in the following chart.  

A full screen version of this chart can be found here.

Wrap Up

This raise increased my forward dividends by $2.63 with me doing nothing.  That's right, absolutely nothing to contribute to their operations.  Based on my portfolio's current yield of 3.02% this raise is like I invested an extra $87 in capital.  Except that I didn't!  One of the companies I own just decided to send more cash my way.  

That's how you can eventually reach the crossover point where your dividends received exceed your expenses.  That's DIVIDEND GROWTH INVESTING AT WORK!  The beauty of the dividend growth investing strategy is that you build up your dividends through fresh capital investment as well dividend increases from the companies you own.

So far in 2018 I've received 50 dividend increases from 44 of the companies in my FI Portfolio combining to increase my forward 12-month dividends by $461.52.  

My FI Portfolio's forward-12 month dividends increased to $6,784.34.  Including my FolioFirst portfolio's forward dividends of $90.89 brings my total taxable accounts dividends to $6,875.23.  My Roth IRA's forward 12-month dividends remain at $396.62.

Do you own shares of Iron Mountain?  What about other high yield companies with dividend yields above 7%?

Please share your thoughts below.