PODCAST 211 SCORES: VERIZON, BCE, ALTRIA, TC ENERGY, MAGNA, CROWN CASTLE Artwork

Safe Dividend Investing

In 2000, I lost $300,000 in mutual funds that an investment advisor had put my lifesavings into.... I lost it because I had entrusted it to an industry that does not educate investors nor encourage them to look closely at what that industry is doing with their money..... I set out to find a better, safer way to invest..... My podcasts relate to what I learned in creating a generous, reliable income and in growing my wealth.... A few of the more important lessons I learned and explore are:.... (1) It is critical that you become a self-directed investor.....(2) If you can not easily measure the risk and potential in an investment, then do not invest in it. This excludes from your portfolio bundled investment devices, like mutual funds, ETFs and Index funds,..... (3) Financially strong companies who have paid “good dividends” for decades will continue to stay strong and continue to pay good dividends because it is both part of their "character" and in their executives selfish interest.....(4) Diversification is critical. Investing equally in the best 20 strong dividend stocks is the ideal.....A portfolio of 20 limits your risk in any one stock to 5% of your wealth..... No matter how strong you think a stock is, do not fall in love with it..... I have lived very well off my steady dividend income for 18 years, through two market crashes and one pandemic. I have watched my portfolio’s capital more than triple from where I started, despite taking out a generous dividend income every year to live on... In charts, for my second investment book,(Safer Better Dividend Investing), I spent months scoring all 628 dividend stocks paying dividends of 6% or greater traded on the TSX, NYSE and the NASDAQ. I discovered dozens of stocks that can provide not only a generous dividend income but outstanding capital growth.....Financial independence is realizable for careful, patient, dividend investors.

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Safe Dividend Investing

PODCAST 211 SCORES: VERIZON, BCE, ALTRIA, TC ENERGY, MAGNA, CROWN CASTLE

March 08, 2025 • Ian Duncan MacDonald

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Welcome to Podcast 211 of Safe Dividend Investing. Be sure to visit the transcript for this podcast to find the detailed information on each stock that was scored.

You may also want visit Podcast 210 where in the printed transcript, you will find Chapter 4 from my investment guidebooks. It explains in easily understood language how the IDM stock scoring system works. Using this information you can manually score any stock you encounter. The IDM stock scoring software that I provide to those who purchase my books is derived from this chapter. The software just makes scoring stocks faster and easier.

The first 190 Safe Dividend Investing podcasts answered hundreds of questions about stocks that I had received from my podcast listeners and the readers of my other publications. Starting with Podcast 191 the the weekly podcasts have usually dealt with identifying the week's 10 dividend stocks whose recent exceptional share price growth on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges may have made them worth considering as possible portfolio acquisitions. It is also an opportunity for me to bring to the listeners attention information that I think may assist them in creating and managing their self-directed stock portfolio.

At www.informus.ca for information you can learn more about my six investment guide books.

IAN
imacd@informus.ca

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author, Artist, Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
imacd@informus.ca

Pod 211 – 8 MARCH 2025

Safe Dividend Investing-

Greetings to listeners all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 211, on 8th of March, 2025. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald.

In the first 190 Podcasts of Safe Dividend Investing, you can find answers to hundreds of investment questions.

Starting with Podcast 191 the podcast format was changed. I now bring to your attention each week, from the more than 12,000 stocks available in North America, the five U.S. and the five Canadian high dividend stocks whose share prices gained the most this week

For this podcast I have once again scored all 10 of the stocks and provided details for each stock in the attached transcript. Each stock’s score is calculated out of a possible 100. The highest score I have ever calculated out of the thousands I have scored is an 86. The lowest was a 3. I personally prefer stocks scoring over 50 in my portfolio.

In the previous Podcast 210 you can see exactly how scores are calculated for each data element and why these elements were chosen. This information allows you to manually score any stock you encounter.

The Stock Selectors Used This Week’s 10 were those with:

(1) Trading volumes exceeding 1.1million in US shares and 118,611 in Canadian shares.

(2) US dividend yields exceeding 6% and Canadian yields exceeding 5%

(3) A weekly share price gain exceeding 1% in the US stocks and 1% in Canadian stocks.

(4) US operating margins exceeding 19% and 2% in Canadian stocks

(5) A share price exceeding $27.00 for US stocks and $16.94 for Canadian stocks.

The 5 US common stocks that met these 5 criteria on the New York Stock Exchange were:

1 . Altria Group Inc (MO) ………………………..….SCORE = 63

2 . Crown Castle Inc (CCI)……………………..……SCORE = 58

3 . Verizon Communications Inc (VZ) ………….SCORE = 63

4. Highwood Properties Inc (HIW)……….........SCORE = 54

5. Millicom International Cellular SA (TIGO )...SCORE = 59

The 5 Canadian common stocks meeting the criteria on the Toronto Stock Exchange were:

1. BCE Inc (BCE )……………………..… SCORE = 4,2

2. TC Energy Corporation (TRP)…..SCORE = 71

3. Telus Corporation (T)……………..SCORE = 51

4. Endeavour Mining PLC (EDV )....SCORE = 55

5. Magna International Inc (MG) ..SCORE = 65

DISPLAY OF US STOCK SCORE CALCULATIONS

STK = Stock Symbol 1 = Price $ 2 = 4yr ago Price $ 3= $ book value 4= advisor buys # 5= advisor strong buys # 6= div. yield % 7=operating margin % 8 = trade volume # 9 = P/E ratio

STOCK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

| MO | 57.79 | 48.65 | minus1.32 | 3 | 0 | 7.06 | 46.80 | 12M | 8.8x
| CCI | 97.78 | 158.68 | 12.18 | 3 | 0 | 6.41 | 36.74 | 3M | 34.6x
| VZ | 46.06 | 55.63 | 23.57 | 6 | 0 | 5.88 | 21.23 | 45M | 11.1x
| HIW | 29.44 | 43.94 | 21.67 | 1 | 0 | 6.79 | 25.46 | 2M | 31.3x
| TIGO | 28.53 | 40.52 | 21.32 | 4 | 0 | 5.26 | 24.14 | 2M | 19.2x

DISPLAY OF CANADIAN SCORE CALCULATIONS

STK = Stock Symbol 1 = Price $ 2= 4yr ago Price $ 3= $ book value 4= advisor buys # 5= advisor strong buys # 6= div. yield % 7=operating margin % 8 = trade volume # 9 = P/E ratio

STOCK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

| BCE | 35.61 | 56.48 | 14.81 | 0 | 0 | 11.20 | 21.36 | 5M | 386.6x
| TRP | 65.93 | 53.05 | 24.15 | 6 | 0 | 5.16 | 40.48 | 7M | 16.3x
| T | 22.72 | 26.61 | 10.39 | 5 | 0 | 7.08 | 14.14 | 6M | 34.2x
| EDV | 30.79 | 24.39 | 15.93 | 8 | 3 | 5.29 | 13.75 | 500K | -17.8x
| MG | 54.65 | 115.01 | 58.56 | 4 | 0 | 5.14 | 3.60 | 1M | 10.8x

While scoring the US and Canadian stocks I found the following interesting:

The most expensive stock was <Crown Castle Inc >at < $97.73>and <Telus Corporation> was the least expensive at <$22.72

The most buy recommendations by analysts were <8> for <Endeavour Mining Corporation > and the least number of recommendations were for < Bell Canada> with no buy recommendations.

Only one stock had a strong buy recommendation and once again it was <Endeavour Mining Corporation > with< 3> .

The highest Book Value was for < Magna International> at $58.56 and the lowest was for <Altria Group > at minus $1.32.

The highest number of shares traded was <Verizon Communications Inc> with <45 million> and the lowest number of traded shares was <500 thousand> for <Endeavour Mining PLC>.

<BCE Inc> had the highest dividend yield at <11.20 %>. The lowest dividend yield was < Magna International Inc >at <5.14%> .

The highest operating margin was for <Altria Group Inc> at< 46.80%> and the lowest was for <Magna International Inc> with at <3.60%>.

The best price-to-earnings ratio of <8.8x > was for <Altria Group Inc> and the highest was for <Bell Canada > at <386.6x>. The lowest was a minus 17.8x for <Endeavour Mining Plc).

The stock with the highest IDM score of< 71> was <TC Energy Corporation>. The lowest score was for <Bell Canada> with a < 42 >

If you have not already obtained the stock scoring software that I supply free to those who purchase my investment guidebooks (which are available at Amazon.com), please visit my website www.informus.cawhere you can learn more about my system of safe investing. For those who don’t read books that website can give you a basic understanding of a safe approach to selecting and buying stocks.

My scoring system has helped many investors quickly measure, compare, and choose the best financially strong stocks with high dividend payouts for their portfolios. Now, in these troubling times of threatened tariff confrontations, plunging share prices and warnings of mass layoffs and a recession, this is Ian MacDonald advising you to carefully screen the strength of the stocks in your portfolio.

BACKGROUND

Investment companies work hard to convince the public that they could never invest profitably without allowing the financial industry to nibble away at a client’s life savings for the rest of their lives. The objective of advisors is to transfer as much money from your pocket to the pocket of the financial institution that employs them.

I knew 24 years ago that I had to find a better way to invest when I saw a $300,000 loss in the mutual funds an investment advisor had put my life savings into. Since then, I have learned if you are patient and disciplined you can easily grow your portfolio as a self-directed investor without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees over your lifetime to the investment industry parasites.

My early research quickly showed me that most investors are speculators who see their wealth destroyed when their bet on a stock increasing in price falls below their purchase price. With such speculative churning encouraged by the investment industry, it seemed obvious to me that no one can accurately predict future share prices.

I became a successful self-directed investor by carefully selecting and buying 20 strong, high dividend stocks through my bank’s online self-directed investment platform.

Why have I never been disappointed in my income or my capital gain from my 20 stocks? Because my financially strong stocks have paid ever increasing dividend payments out of their company profits.

While share prices are determined by impulsive speculators making guesses, my dividend payouts are the result of the wise revenue and expense decisions of the experienced managers of the companies whose shares I own.

By looking at free, accessible records that go back for decades, anyone can easily see before they buy a share how that stock’s fluctuating share price has had little or no impact on a stock’s rising dividend payouts.

What do I do when a market crash comes along, and the share price of my stocks, like all stocks, may drop by 50%? I relax and do nothing because I live off my dividends. Those dividends are paid throughout the crash as regularly as they have always been paid by these strong stocks. I know from experiencing the last three market crashes that the share prices of my 20 financially strong stocks w, high values. During the crash I pay my monthly bills with my dividend income just as I have always done.

The idea the investment industry promotes that your portfolio must shrink in value after you retire is meant to scare you into buying more of their investment products. The value of my portfolio has grown by several multiples into the 7 figures and is still growing.

I go for years without selling any of the stocks in my portfolio while realizing a dividend income of 6 to 8 percent each year of the value of my portfolio. Most years the share prices of my 20 strong companies can also increase by about 12%. These rising share prices often cause the company’s managers to proudly increase their dividend payouts to maintain their stock’s historically high dividend yield percentages. That has kept my dividend income well ahead of inflation. You too can also build a strong dividend portfolio just like I did.

Until next week’s podcast this is Ian Duncan MacDonald encouraging you to become a successful self-directed investor.

Any questions and comments can be sent to imacd@informus.ca.