Double Digit Dividend Increases from Nike and UNP

Dividend increases are such welcome news, especially when those increases are in the double digits. Yesterday, both Nike and Union Pacific announced forward dividend increases.  Nike boosted its dividend by 12.5%, which is awesome and considering that I’ve only recently bought into the stock, a nice little bonus. I’m definitely still all in on Nike moving forward, even if its starting yield is low and not all that spectacular.

Union Pacific (UNP) also raised its quarterly dividend from $0.55 to $0.605 per share. This is a 10% increase from the railroad. Add to that, UNP is also buying back 120 million shares of stock, which will increase my ownership. Being that, current shares outstanding is 824.11 million, this will represent an authorization to retire 15% of shares over the next 4 years! It took a long time to get that dividend boost but management finally did it…and it wasn’t some token 1% increase either.

I’ve been looking to restart my automatic purchases of UNP stock, however, it is currently trading at $15 higher than my cost basis. I really wish I had loaded up on more when it dropped to $70 a share earlier this year. Nonetheless, I love having more money being sent my way for doing absolutely nothing except holding on to ownership in a company.

On another note, I’m currently in a holding pattern and checking to see if I’ll make any stock purchases in the upcoming few weeks. There’s some interesting opportunities out there and some names on my list, that I might liked to get a hold of soon.