Tag: at&t

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Dividend based investing

Reading Time: 5 minutes
Stock chart for AT&T ends on 07/14/2023 – this actually the low point of stock for a while as you can see the new chart here

(Update 12-19-2024) I gave it more thought here at my Substack.

(Update 12-31-2023) I just looked at one of my IRA accounts in which I hold mostly stocks. The dividend yield is about 1% (I hold about 45% of the portfolio in $BRK). There are two points of the views on dividend based investing, some people argue we don’t always need the dividend. In the example of $BRK, basically we can trust the management, and we just need to sell the stocks to get the “dividend” for our spending need. Below is a YT video that explains this.

(Update 12-15-2023) Costco is issuing a special dividend of $15 per share, and this spurs some interest on some investors. Quote Motley Fool: “This will be Costco’s fifth-ever special dividend. Previous special dividends were paid in 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2020 in the amounts of $7, $5, $7, and $10, respectively. This makes the company’s 2024 special dividend of $15 its largest, by far.” I only have a few shares of $COST, btw. Below is a bigger $COST shareholder.

https://twitter.com/joecarlsonshow/status/1735684794426724420

But I have more $KO, and I believe today 12-15-2023 is also the day Coca Cola pays out quarterly dividend: it’s 46 cents a share. Note $BRK has much more dividend income from $KO.

https://twitter.com/DividendGrowth/status/1735634033449500710

Somewhat unexpected, I noticed the Polaris paid quarterly dividend too: 65 cent a share. I only have a few shares too.

Other dividend stocks I have: $DVN and $PFE. Both declined significantly this year. I bought $DVN in the hope of getting the dividend yield, and it seems with the oil price slipping (in the near future), this didn’t work out for me yet. You may also notice $DVN’s dividend dropped compared to last year.

In the case of $PFE, the situation is much more dire: as shown in this Yahoo Finance Video.

Last but not least, Steve Baller, the former CEO of Microsoft, is getting lots of money from $MSFT dividend.

https://twitter.com/DividendGrowth/status/1735327536631235050

Weekend thoughts 07-22-2023

I have invested or to be more precise speculated in the US stock market since 2003, and this will mark the 20 year anniversary. In recent years, I gave more thoughts to the dividend, both because the dividends are becoming more meaningful, as well as I am thinking about potentially switch from a 9 to 5 job to multiple income streams, e.g., dividends, adjunct teaching at college, ads income from this blog (this seems to be hardest so far, btw :-), etc.

A few things to keep in mind when doing dividend-based or focused investing.

  1. Make sure the company can afford or pay the dividend from its Free Cash Flow (FCF). If something is too good to be true, it’s likely not true. Case in point, if you look at AT&T stock now (07-21-2023), the dividend yield is 7.5%. The problem with AT&T and some other companies (e.g., $SCS, Steelcase the office furniture maker came to mind) is with the debt and deteriorating business or economy, they may not be able to pay the dividend continuously. I know one company that cut dividends recently: VF Corp ($VFC). More on AT&T, I had a tweet on its return in the last 29 years: I think I still need to calculate it myself. Not sure if the chart below includes all the cash dividends and the stock dividend (“Additionally, shareholders of AT&T received 0.241917 shares of WBD for each share of AT&T common stock they held at close”) $T #dividend.
  2. I just noticed this Tweet (thread): S&P Dividend Aristocrats (Wikipedia; 5 year performance comparison with S&P 500, google finance, it seems they did NOT include the dividends in the calculation). I have $KO (#CocaCola) on this list. But Number 2 on the list Leggett & Platt, Incorporated (LEG) looked interesting to me. I just realized it’s based in Missouri (wiki), in fact, the town Carthage, Missouri is close to Joplin, MO, and it has two interstates passing the town: I-44 and I-49. Note their products are also interesting (e.g., this geosynthetic solution and their specialty products, as well as their history. They seem making components for office furniture too – reminds me of Steelcase and my recent purchase of an office chair. The family appears to no longer controls the company. Their current annual dividend is $1.84 (rate is %6.26 per Friday 7-21-2023 closing price of $29.38). I think I will do a deep dive into the company next. Btw, recently I realized this is a hard time for new graduates to get into the IT/software development field, I just noticed there is one position for this company (IT support, I know it’s not ideal, but still something to think about as an entry-level job).
  3. I think I probably say a word about why invested in “stocks that issue cash dividend”. Besides the benefits of cash, a company that issues dividends regularly in some way shows two things: 1) Financial strength (again show me the free cash flow); 2) They care about the shareholder, in some cases the owners probably have a lot of shares too and they actually rely on the dividend for their lives. On the other hand, this does not mean the companies that doesn’t issue dividend are not good, in fact, Berkshire Hathaway the company famous investor Warren Buffett doesn’t issue regular dividend. I recall he said once they did issue 10 cents (source: “Other than a ten cent per share dividend that Berkshire paid in 1967, the company has never paid a dividend to shareholders since Warren Buffett took control in 1965.“) dividend, which looking back it was an expensive mistake. The reason being they invested in the money (say $1) instead of give it to shareholders right away, they get way more than $1 down the road.

PS: Leggett & Platt reminds me of another Missouri based company (Monett, Missouri), ironically it’s a banking ( technology company named Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY). They provide technology and service for financial services industry, with a focus on smaller banks or credit unions. It has an excellent return if we look from its IPO. It has a small dividend, and is in the S&P 500 index. Maybe someday I will drive around those two towns, and see if I can find special sauces that made them successful. Note the greater St. Lotus area has some S&P and Fortune 500 companies too: such as Emerson Electric (EMR) on this list (tweet). Btw, the all time return of JKHY (+47,569.44%, from 1985) is much better than EMR (+1,717.33%, from 1983). Not sure if Google finance has the complete set of historical data. Btw, Leggett & Platt (LEG) Inc performed similar to EMR in this period. I probably looked at JKHY about 15 years ago, not definitely not as serious as Warren Buffett. Warren probably reads the annual report for the company he is interested (plus the reports for 8 competitors).

Market sentiment week of 07-17

It can be better summarized by the unusual_whales tweet on the $ABNB share sales of its cofounder. While I am not saying the insiders always time the market, but it still reminds me of this: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sells more than $285 million in Microsoft stock. I recall about 6 month later (April 2022), $MSFT and Nasdaq had a peak / climax. Again I am not predicting the same this time around 🙂

https://twitter.com/stlplace/status/1682827956371030018
Categories
401k and Personal Finance DIY gadgets Life Tips Technology

Switching from Charter Spectrum to AT&T broadband

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I thought about this for a while. The last time I planned to switch, was a few years ago, at our previous home (condo), for some reason the AT&T technician could not find a port for the broadband, per my wife (I was likely working at the credit card company at the time). And the technician gave up. I vaguely recall the reason for the switch was to reduce the monthly bill. Internet providers usually gave a good introductory price for one year, before jacking up the prices. And in the case of Charter, they jack up prices almost every year. Once I called them, and said I wanted to switch, and then they lowered the price by $10 a month. Basically switching providers or phone calls are two ways I know to lower the broadband bill.

I didn’t think of switching during the move – partially due to the unpleasant experience I had with $T (AT&T, T is their stock ticker symbol). Partially because Charter/Spectrum gave a good intro price for a year for new customers (here new as a new address, or a new account). I recall it took me some effort to figure out which cable to plug into my cable modem (the broadband modern for Charter), set up the Wifi router, and my IP phone (iTalkBB, refer to this old blog post here, time flies. Probably time to cancel iTalkBB now.) and I didn’t bother to switch to AT&T until very recently. I did recall about 2 summers ago, we had a power outage, and Charter Internet came back as soon as the power is back (both the cable modem and wifi router needed electricity). But the communication lines were damaged especially the AT&T cables, if my memory is correct, and it seems today during my AT&T install, another outside technician needs to come to the outside terminal and do some work – likely a fallout from 2 years ago. Again back to the topic.

Recently I had some intermittent issues with the Charter/Spectrum internet so I decided to switch. The intermittent/reliability issue is both from my observation and from informal surveys among friends (thank you friends 🙂

I placed the installation order last week, and a technician came today. I did some surveys before today. So I pointed out the outside and inside cables. Installation took a few hours. The setup is relatively straightforward, I mean the embedded Wifi router. It’s done via an app called Smart Home Manager. The technician is friendly and helpful too. In addition to pointing out the app, as well as showing me how to get to it, he told me to switch off Charter shortly to avoid a new monthly bill.

I did a speed test just now, it seems Charter still has a faster download speed, but the upload speed is comparable. I will update this post as time goes on.

PS: I recall The Sound of dial-up Internet both in China and in the US. It’s a bit funny when I was applying for US graduate schools in the fall of 1996, I borrowed the email and computer access card from my friend in Fudan U. The professor in Rolla thought I was a graduate student in Fudan: which probably helped my application a bit as they are more prestigious than my graduate school 🙂 I still remember those days when I wrote emails on a terminal of a UNIX machine. Copy, paste, and save information or write information to a disk seems like a century ago, in today’s smartphone, and ubiquitous Internet world. Also, just came across this post back in 2014 when I had to do some magic or hack to make the iPad work with Wifi at home.

PS2: the monthly cost, was $80 per month for Charter, vs $50 a month for AT&T. AT&T has a slightly slower download speed, from the speed test. Also, some offers one may be able to use. Rakuten (eBates): I used it and I saw $112.50 cash in my account (this will cover the $99 installation cost, btw). Some Chase credit cards may offer cash back for AT&T fiber (I think they all broadband will likely work): I plan to use my Amazon Chase card as it has a $50 offer. Last but not least, I had a twitter poll for this.

Update 01-28-2024: I used offer from Amex Gold too. Also it seems Dosh App gave me cash back on the top of the Amex offer. Now we are talking about double dipping 🙂 Last but not least, I realized that I used the link at ebates (now rakuten) and I received $112.50 cash back from them as well (on 08-15-2023). So in summary, at least for now, the AT&T service (about $55 a month) is mostly free for me/my family at this time. I do expect to use fewer offer from now on. And I don’t plan to switch back to Charter soon as their service seems still spotty from time to time.

Categories
Business Technology

AT&T and IBM

Reading Time: < 1 minuteI found some interesting articles about AT&T and IBM. They are written by Wu Jun, a research scientist at Google. I like Wu Jun’s writing style (humorous), and his business perspective of the two companies (very good).

Here is the link to AT&T articles; and here is link to IBM series. Both are in Chinese, and there are 6 articles for each company.

One thing I felt amazing about IBM is this (quote the article):

在小华生执掌 IBM 的二十年里，IBM 的平均年增长率高达 30%，这在世界上可能是绝无仅有的，他的父亲也没有做到这一点。

Translated in English: in the 20 years when Watson Jr. was the CEO of IBM, the average anual growth rate is 20%. No other company has done that. His father Waton Sr. did not accomplish that either.

Categories
Business

Cingular Back to AT&T

Reading Time: < 1 minuteI don’t know the rationale behind this, but Cingular wireless is going to change back to AT&T name. I am not brand expert, nor marketing major, but this is a dumb move. A little background: when Southwest Bell (SBC) and Bellsouth created this wireless joint venture, they created this cool name “Cingular”, I remember my first wireless carrier was SBC Wireless, which is the ancester of Cingular. For a while I was puzzuled when my cell phone screen changed from “SBC wireless” to “Cingular”, wondering whether my phone is being hacked.

Continue reading “Cingular Back to AT&T”