Hi all, it’s Sunday again 😎
I keep playing Calendar Tetris at work, but it doesn’t stop me from doing what I’m most passionate about: investing my money and in parallel sharing my journey via this blog.
Having said that, I hope you enjoy this week’s 5-Bullet Sunday 💪
#NewPosition #EuropeanEarnings #Quote #RecommendedReads #RecommendedVideo
🌟 This week’s purchase
After a very long time of consideration I finally pulled the trigger to initiate a new position in Realty Income Corp ($O). $O is a Tier-2 stock for me, but I have been a bit reluctant lately with investing in stocks in or near to the blast zone.
One of the reasons which I mentioned before is the need to see the impact to earnings first.
“I only consider investing in companies in the remaining sectors after their next quarterly earnings update to check how severe the earnings have been impacted”
So that’s exactly what I’ve done last week. I took a closer look into Realty Income Corp and I believe that they can weather this storm, provided that the economy slowly starts opening up again.
The below slide in their investors presentation finally convinced me to initiate the position (including fundamentals like balance sheet strength). I believe it’s outstanding during a pandemic to be able to collect that much money from their tenants, especially when comparing to few others in their industry. It just shows how strong the quality of their portfolio is.
Having said that, these kind of quality stocks currently show cyclical behavior (i.e. like 3M), so the real opportunities to buy are now. Therefore I initiated a small position which equates to 10% of my desired position size at $48.99 with a yield on cost of 5.58%.
🌟 European Earnings Announcements
Henkel AG & Co KGaA ($ETR:HEN3) has reported relatively good sales numbers given the current situation. They don’t report earnings per share in their Q1 trading updates, so it keeps me a bit in the dark regarding their bottomline performance. We still need to wait for the AGM (17 June) to know if anything happens to their proposed dividend.
ERG S.p.A. ($BIT:ERG), one of the clean-energy focused energy companies in Europe, reported “so so” numbers. It’s so refreshing to hear a company not using COVID-19 as a reason to announce some weakness in their earnings. Have a look at the quote below:
“In view of the first quarter results, the continued lack of windiness and water availability recorded also during the early part of the second quarter and the foreseeable further deterioration in the price scenario, end-of-year EBITDA is now estimated at between 480 and 500 million Euro and net debt between 1,350 and 1,430 million Euro.“
Their 0.75 Euro dividend will go ex-dividend tomorrow and is expected to be paid out on Wednesday. Unfortunately they did cut their dividend after 20 years of growth (1.15 Euro in 2019). But in case you are still interested, you can get a yield on cost of 4.3% at current prices. You would just need to wait another year 😉
Let’s see what next week brings again with Ackermans & van Haaren NV and Home Invest Belgium SA reporting their earnings.
🌟 A quote that kept me thinking
I stumbled on the below quote at Twitter from @Wealth_Theory and I find it really great:
If you’re alive, the greatest tragedy would be to live a life you don’t enjoy.
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It just kept me thinking when I went for a long walk with the dog this morning. There are so many elements to this:
- What does truly enjoying mean?
- Am I truly enjoying life?
- Is there a time element to it?
- How will you know that “you’re there”?
- Does this mean that you would never have a bad day?
Needless to say, I actually don’t have any clear answers to these questions. The one thing I do know is that my FIRE plans are a part of the plan to increase the quality of life.
I think that getting rid of financial constraints (active income / sweat income) would provide me with much more freedom to make certain decisions in life. I just can’t go yet for a 3 month “road trip” through Europe by train or just rent a room in Budapest for a month to explore the beautiful city. I’m getting there, but it will still take quite a lot of sweat income to turn it into passive income.
Let’s see how it goes, life’s a journey!
🌟 Recommended Reads
This time I am recommending again two reads from the online community:
1️⃣ Lanny from Dividend Diplomats has been reflecting on the recent dividend cuts in his portfolio. He has quite a large portfolio and 8 of his companies decided to cut their dividend. That’s a lot! I appreciate how he openly shares his reflections about it and the actions that he took. That’s how we learn and grow as investors.
2️⃣ Charles Kush is someone that I am already following for a while. He posts a lot about online marketing and digital investing related topics. His posts are often very insightful and much more different than what you would stumble upon in the blogging community. I liked his latest about in which he introduces Google’s new rising retail categories.
🌟 Recommended Video
This time I would like to share a video from Mister Wonderful. I actually found him quite a grumpy old man based on the Shark Tank episodes, but the below video really showed a different side of him. I actually started to like him, hence why I wanted to share this video with you.
No specific investment advice in there, but you will rather just get a view on how a pundit billionaire lives.
#DryingUnderwearInTheOffice
This was it for the week!
I hope that you enjoyed this week’s 5-Bullet Sunday. If so, feel free to hit the like button 👇 or leave a comment 🙏.
I wish you all a lovely remainder of the Sunday.
Yours Truly,
— European Dividend Growth Investor
