Dividends Premium: Q1 Results Update

Q1 Results for Dividends Premium and Dividends Premium REIT Recommendations.

Editor’s note: Earnings results and guidance updates are where the rubber meets the road for long-term investors. Are the companies we own still becoming more valuable as businesses? Or are we just counting on greater fools than us to come along and pay an even more inflated price for a situation that’s essentially going no where?

That’s the question I constantly ask of every company I recommend in Dividends Premium and Dividends Premium REITs. And the answers have rarely been more important in this increasingly uncertain environment, where wild market stock swings have become the rule.

The May issues of Dividends Premium and Dividends Premium REITs will have full coverage of how our recommended companies fared in Q1 results and guidance updates. Here’s a look at the early reporters. I hope you find it useful.

Not yet a member? Then consider giving Dividends Premium a try. There’s information on how to subscribe in this email and on the Substack application. You’ll also get 24-7 access to my Dividends Roundtable, which I host on the Discord application.—RC

Dividend Stocks Open a Lead in 2025

Measured by S&P 500 performance, 2025 has been one of the more volatile years in memory so far. And it’s a fair bet we’ll see more wild swings in coming months, as investors respond to hard economic news and politics alike.

Moreover, the S&P 500 remains dominated by just 7 Big Tech stocks, which continue to comprise more than 30 percent of the index. That compares to less than 3 percent for utility stocks. Big Tech is also 10 times the oil and gas sector’s weighting and 100 times that of metals and mining.

The S&P 500’s extreme weighting of Big Tech stocks with still historically bloated valuations means related ETFs like SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) simply won’t keep up with the stock market’s ongoing great rotation. And as a result, our income and growth portfolio stocks should continue to outperform, as they have so far in 2025 by roughly 15 percentage points.

Notably, our average portfolio stock performance is also about 12 percentage points ahead of the iShares Select Dividend ETF (DVY), often used as a benchmark for income equity fund performance. That’s despite more than a few common holdings, for example Altria Group (NYSE: MO), Dominion Energy (NYSE: D) and LyondellBasel Industries (NYSE: LYB).

The difference maker this year is the greater focus and flexibility a portfolio of individually chosen stocks gives us—popular ETFs by their nature have to overweight the biggest stocks to accommodate fund flows. And our portfolio has a two percentage-point yield advantage as well, a key edge in a volatile market.

As is the case every year, this portfolio has had winners and losers. And there is an unusually wide spread of about 70 percentage points between