May is coming to an end and summer is slowly starting! The garden is really coming to life now and we finally started to plan some holidays.

Needless to say, but we decided to take it easy this year and therefore to visit a place off-season with limited interaction with other people. The last thing I need right now is a crowded place. Let’s see how it goes, but I can tell you that I’m really looking forward already!

Having said that, enjoy this week’s 5-bullet Sunday 👇

#Danone #Dividends #Shell #CrodaInternational #SpaceX $TSLA #deGiro #EconomyVsStockMarket

🌟 Danone dividend

In early April I wrote a post about Danone’s decision to postpone their dividend. My thoughts at the time were something like:

• It’s not popular to announce a dividend in the midst of the pandemic
• There might be political pressure to suspend the dividend
• It’s uncertain how severe the pandemic will be
• The company has a very good reputation
• Their balance sheet is rock solid

For those reasons I thought it was wise for the company to postpone the decision about the dividend. Well, good news, we don’t need to wait any longer!

Back on the 20th the company announced that it will pay the proposed dividend 🎉

The ex-Dividend date is 14 July and the payment date is 16 July. You can still “scoop-up” some shares today at a yield of 3,41% (2,98% after deduction of 12,8% dividend withholding tax).

🌟 New noble 30 ⚔ member

Royal Dutch Shell decided to cut its dividend back in April for the first time since the 2nd world war. This automatically meant that the company lost its status as a Noble 30 ⚔ member. It took me a while to update the list and replace Shell by a new member, but here we go:

Good bye Royal Dutch Shell 👋

Welcome Croda International plc 👍

Croda International plc ($LON:CDRA) is a British speciality chemicals company based at Snaith in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It is a company that I wasn’t aware of earlier and it should have actually been on the initial list. It ticks all the criteria and it has at least 28 years of dividend growth.

The company pays 90 pence in dividend over 2019 and currently yields 1,7%. The yield is below my starting yield threshold and that is mainly due to the relatively high price-to-earnings multiple (30+). The payout ratio stands at 52% and the company grew its dividend with an average of 7,18% over the last 10 years.

I find the company overvalued, but I would consider further exploring it if the P/E would drop to around 20. Their business portfolio looks good and their balance sheet is very strong.

🌟 Fly me to the moon Mars

🎵 Fly me to the moon 
Let me play among the stars 
Let me see what spring is like 
On a, Jupiter and Mars 
In other words, hold my hand 
In other words, baby, kiss me 🎵

These were exactly the lyrics from the song by Frank Sinatra that came to my mind when I saw yesterdays SpaceX’s crew dragon demo-2 launch.

Bringing new people to the International Space Station is not so special by itself. But what made it special this time was the fact that it was for the first time in 9 years that a manned spaceship launched from the US and that it was the first commercial manned-flight ever to ISS.

Does this mean that a new era of space exploration has finally started? I really hope so! I’m part of a generation which is hungry for some real new breakthroughs. We’ve been to ISS multiple times before and we’ve been on the moon. So a real breakthrough for me would be getting a person to walk on Mars.

Maybe it’s just a dream, but I’ll be for sure watching when Elon Musk still gets this done within our lifetimes!

🌟 Recommended Reads

J. Money from budgets are sexy has decided to stop his blog. This is really the end of an era, because he has inspired so many people to start their journey of Financial Independence. His last blog post includes a lot of statistics about his blog which are just mind-blowing. If you don’t know his blog yet, then I’d definitely recommend having a look!

Mr Groeigeld wrote a blog post (in Dutch) about some recent awkward behavior from deGiro which means that he has to sell two of his US positions. I would recommend to read it to assess whether you are also impacted by deGiro’s recent decisions. I can’t help it to think that these are the “synergy potentials” that were envisioned as part of the acquisition by Flatex.

🌟 Recommended Video

Robert Shiller is a professor at Yale and he is famous for the Shiller P/E ratio. He often gets interview by the news channels to provide his opinion.

Therefore he was on Bloomberg this week explaining the reason for the divergence between the economy and the stock market. His explanation resonated a lot with me, so I thought it’s worth sharing with all of you 😄

5-Bullet Sunday is a weekly blog post with 5 topics that were on my mind this week related to Financial Independence and Dividend Growth Investing or something that just fed my curiosity. An overview of earlier posts can be found here

That was it for 5-Bullet Sunday, edition #22

If you would like to get notified on any upcoming post, then I recommend you to subscribe to my blog. You will get an email every Tuesday with a link to the latest posts on this blog.

Have a good remainder of the Sunday!

Yours Truly,

European Dividend Growth Investor

Disclaimer

I’m not a certified financial planner/advisor nor a certified financial analyst nor an economist nor a CPA nor an accountant nor a lawyer. I’m not a finance professional through formal education. I’m a person who believes and takes pride in a sense of freedom, satisfaction, fulfillment and empowerment that I get from being financially competent and being conscious managing my personal money. The contents on this blog are for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, accounting, or legal advice. I can’t promise that the information shared on my blog is appropriate for you or anyone else. By reading this blog, you agree to hold me harmless from any ramifications, financial or otherwise, that occur to you as a result of acting on information provided on this blog.