Podcast 242- Practice Analyzing 3 Stocks - This week: MNR - MACY'S INC -TIGO

Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing's Podcast 242- (4 October 2025)

 Ian Duncan MacDonald has started to write another investment book on stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ. Both his books and his podcasts are  written for those who fear investing in the stock market  because they are convinced  they will lose their life savings.  Often they keep their savings in bank savings accounts or bonds that fail to even match the average annual inflation rate of 3.5%.  Each year their savings are able to purchase less-and-less.

 There is a better, safe way to grow your life savings. Carefully chosen financially strong stocks paying high dividends can provide a generous, reliable, growing income. Doubling the value of your portfolio within 5 years is possible due to these stocks normal capital gains and the compounding impact of investing your dividend income back into the stocks in your portfolio. Upon retiring you can live off your dividends without having to liquidate your portfolio.

Investors in mutual funds and other investment vehicles may only have a vague idea of what they are invested in and have zero control over such "managed" investments. Each year they pay fees which are drain on their savings.  Self-directed investors know exactly what is in their carefully chosen,  safe portfolio of 20 diversified stocks that they have  analyzed and scored. Once that  portfolio is established they may go for years without a need to make changes to it.

 Ian invites those seeking to gain self-confidence in self-directed investing to listen to his podcasts. The first 160 answer many questions from new investors. The more recent podcasts each week analyze and score 3 financially strong, high dividend stocks. Follow along with Ian until you feel comfortable enough to start building your own portfolio.  A written transcript  accompanies each podcast for quick reference and review.

In today's  podcast #242 he is scoring and analyzing the following 3 stocks that are traded on the New York Stock Exchange:

 (1) MACH National Reources LP (stock symbol MNR) 

(2) Macy's Inc (stock symbol M  )

(3) Millicom International Cellular SA (stock symbol (TIGO )

For more information on self-directed investing go to Ian's website www.informus.ca.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and 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

Transcript

Safe Dividend Investing

4 October 2025  

Podcast 242

Greetings to listeners all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 242, on October 4th of 2025.  My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of six investment books.

I continue to work on my new investment book to be called “2025 Edition – America’s 200 Strongest High Dividend Stocks – Analyzed and Scored”. Like all my other investment books it is being written for those who fear investing in the stock market because they believe they could lose the savings that they may have spent a lifetime accumulating.

My objective is to show you how easy it is to identify financially strong companies that will provide a generous, reliable, growing, monthly dividend income but also grow the total value of your portfolio.

 Self-directed investors are unlike those who blindly entrust their life savings to so called “investment professionals” (whose hidden agendas and incentives may not be in an investor’s best interest).  A self-directed investor not only saves thousands of dollars in investment fees, charges and commissions but they understand the strength of what they choose to carefully invest in.

As a self-directed investor you would gain free access to stock research tools available on the internet. These tools immediately allow you to narrow your search from the thousands available down to the 20 financially strongest, paying high dividends. 

This selection process is like what I am now going through in selecting the 200 financially strongest, high-dividend stocks for this new book. I began my search by entering the following criteria into my bank’s free stock selector program:

(1) The stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchanges or the NASDAQ.

(2) Only common shares are wanted. Preferred shares are excluded.

(3) The stocks must have a dividend yield percent of 5 percent or more. 

(4) The share price must be $5 or greater.

(5) Their Operating Margin must be 3% or more. 

The 200 stocks that have appeared offer readers a wide enough choice to select the 20 best for their portfolio.  20 is enough to give a portfolio a safe diversification, yet small enough for an investor to easily create and manage their portfolio. 

This week I have chosen to review from the 200 selected stocks three stocks whose company name begins with the letter “M”. By scoring and analyzing these 3 stocks along with me, you can see how you could confidently build your own strong portfolio of 20 high dividend stocks.  

The three stocks selected for analysis this week are:

(1)        MACH Natural Resources LP (stock symbol – MNR). It is a Oklahoma, OK, US based, company in volved oil and gas production and development.

(2)        Macy’s Inc (stock symbol – M ) is a New York, NY, US, multiple channel retailer. 

(3)         Millicom International Cellular SA (stock symbol – TIGO) is a Luxembourg based digital communications and media company.

 To help investors compare stocks. I freely supply my IDM stock scoring software, on request, to those who purchase any of my 6 books from Amazon.com. Each book details how the scoring system works and even shows how to calculate scores manually without the software.

The first data element to be considered and scored is the stock’s current share price. A high share price is an indication of strength. It is a stock in demand. 

The highest share price of the three was TIGO at $49.26, the two lower were M at $16.45 and MNR at $14.16. (All amounts are in US dollars).

The second element is the stock’s share price 4 years ago. in August of 2021, TIGO led a with a share price of $36.99. Over the last 4 years it has shown about a 30% gain in value. M was at $17.10 and has shown slight drop in value. MNR was not listed 4 years ago.

A stock whose share price is growing is sign of strength. A shrinking share price is warning sign to consider.

The third element is the book value of the shares. Book value is the financial evaluation of company worth as calculated by accountants. TIGO, with a book value $21.08, was the highest. M’s book value was $16.39, which was closest to its current share price.  MNR’s book value was $10.13. 

 Strong stocks whose book value is close to their current share price or even exceeding the share price indicate the stock is strong. It can make the purchase of that stock seem like a real bargain and with increased odds the share price will increase. 

The fourth and fifth elements are how many investment analysts have given the stock a “buy” and a “strong buy” recommendation. My research indicates that analysts are only at best about 50% accurate in predicting future stock prices. However, their predictions are considered because they do motivate some speculators to buy or sell stock which can impact share prices.

 MNR led this scoring element with 4 buy recommendations and 1 strong buy. M had 2 buy recommendations and TIGO had 1 buy recommendation. Both had no strong buy recommendations. I define a strong buy as an analyst’s predicted share price that is at least 50% higher than its current share price. 

The sixth element was the dividend yield percent. MNR was highest, with a dividend yield of 16.03%. TIGO’s dividend yield was 6.09% and LXP’s was 4.44%.

 Since dividends are paid out of profits, high dividends are usually a good indicator of a company’s financial strength. However, sometimes a weak company will pay an unusually high dividend to desperately hold onto or attract shareholders who do not consider all the information elements in choosing the stocks for their portfolio.

The seventh element was the operating margin. It reveals the amount of money left over after operating expenses are deducted from revenues. The higher the operating margin percentage, the stronger the stock. TIGO’s operating margin of 36.20% was highest followed by MNR’s at 29.60% and M far behind at 3.27%. 

 To drive up their operating margins, good managers focus on increasing revenues by raising prices and adding new products while reducing expenses. It is wise to compare operating margins of other companies in the same industry to get an idea of what a normal operating margin for a company in that industry would be. 

The eighth element was the stocks’ share trading volume. High trading volumes usually, but not always, indicate rising prices for a stock in high demand.  M traded 8,582,059 shares that day. TIGO traded 246,620 shares traded, while MNR traded only 65,425 shares.  A sudden high volume of shares traded can indicate either high demand or rejection of that stock by investors. Signaling that further investigation may be required.

The final element was the price-to-earnings ratio. It is not unusual to see hot speculative stocks with ratios of 300 to 1 or even in extreme cases 1,000 to 1. I always think of price-to-earning as indicating how many months of profits it would take to earn back the money invested in buying a stock. The lower the ratio the better. 

 MNR had the best Price-to-Earning’s ratio at 7.3x. TIGO’s Price to Earnings ratio was minus 8.7x. M’s was a 9.3x. 

When all these sub-elements were entered into the IDM scoring software the total grand score for TIGO was 61. M was 56 and  MNR was 39.

 The IDM scoring software grades stocks between 0 and 100. The highest score I have ever calculated was an 86. Few stocks score over 70. The lowest score was a 3.

 I personally avoid adding stocks to my portfolio that score under 50. (Most stocks score under 50). 

The higher the score, the stronger the stock appears to be. However, the highest score may not always be your best choice for a portfolio.  A score in the fifties might be paying a much higher dividend yield and be a better income producing choice than a score of 70. That is why it is always recommended that you always take the time to check historical share prices and dividend payouts going back, year by year, to 1999. 

While you are looking for a healthy upward trend over the 25 years. It would be unusual to see consecutive increases each year. However, over several years you would want to see a healthy upward trend.

You also want to confirm that the executives of the company believe in consistently sharing their profits with their shareholder/owners by paying dividends. Once such a dividend habit is established, you will often see these managers increasing dividend payouts at a much faster rate than the share prices which are controlled by speculators. While managers have limited influence on share price their dividend increases keep your income ahead of inflation.

When I did a price and dividend history check of the three stocks, I found that MNR was not listed on the stock exchange until 2024. Its share price debuted at $20.26 with a dividend payout of $0.90. 

M's share price in 1999 was $22.40 with no dividend payout until 2003 when its share price was at $21.68 and it paid a dividend of $0.06. By 2015 the share price had risen to a high of $58.19 with a dividend payout of $0.36. By 2024 the share price had dropped to $15.25 and the dividend payout to $0.19. 

TIGO’s share price in 1999 was $62.29 but a dividend was not paid until 20.10 when the share price was $74.92. with a dividend payout of $1.24. In 2011 the share price reached its highest at $101.75 with a dividend of $1.80. By 2019 the share price had dropped down to $44.47 and the dividend payout to $1.32. There was no dividend payout after this date. By 2024 the share price was $26.36.            

The final historical stock record to check is to do a Google search for each stock which includes their company name, their stock symbol and the words “complaints” and “legals”. There were no recent lawsuits or complaints filed against MNR and TIGO. However there is a possible securities fraud involving concealing $150,000,000 in delivery expenses being investigated at Macy’s.

The perfect stock does not exist. However, if you had to make a choice which one of these 3 stocks would you choose?  By showing that you can make such a choice, you have demonstrated that you do have an ability to analyze stocks. 

While scoring stocks helps protect your investment, the safety of your portfolio is also greatly increased when you invest equally in 20 strong stocks. With 20 stocks only 5% of what you have invested in any one stock would ever be at risk. Furthermore, because you would be generating between 6% and 8% in annual dividend income and generating an annual portfolio capital gain, most years, of 9% or more, the odds of you ever realizing a significant loss in your total portfolio are highly unlikely. 

By investing your dividends back into the 20 stocks in your high dividend portfolio you can expect to see your portfolio doubling within 5 years. This is due to the compounding benefit of earning new dividends from your re-invested dividends.

FOR MORE INSIGHTS INTO SAFE INVESTING VISIT my website www.informus.ca and all listen to all 242 of my weekly “SAFE DIVIDEND INVESTING” podcasts.  

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