In June 2011 I invested my money equally in a selection of 10 high-yield dividend stocks. With a year of success behind me, in July 2012, I added even more money to the portfolio. Those names offer triple the yield of the average S&P 500 stock. You can read all the details here. Now let’s check out the results so far.

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor’s.

The portfolio continued to perform strongly since my last report. Cumulative performance is now at 24.9%, up 2.3 percentage points from before. However, we slipped a bit against the S&P, from 2.8 down to 2.5. The portfolio’s surge has occurred just as the market started getting rocky. I’m continuing to hold dividends in cash – better than a half-year’s worth – waiting for an excellent opportunity. I’ve been holding more cash than I normally would, expecting a downturn after the runaway start to the markets this year.

The blended yield is 4.8%, and we have more than $300 in cash in the portfolio. May is one of the big months for dividends around here, too, so more money will be rolling in.

In June, I’m going to add $2,000 in cash to the portfolio, to mimic what an investor might do annually. I’ll also add at least two new positions, and I expect to sell at least one. As I asked last week, if you have any good dividend stocks to buy or would like to recommend ones from the portfolio to sell, let me know in the comments box below. Thanks for the suggestions so far.

Dividends and earnings announcements
Here is the recent news on earnings and dividends:

Earnings news:

• Brookfield Infrastructure reported a 38% increase of funds from operation per share, while it was up 48% on an absolute basis. In particular, focus on the per-share amount, since this MLP sometimes issues shares to buy its assets. The company’s FFO payout ratio, at 59%, fell just below the target range of 60%-70%, meaning that we should see up a nice distribution increase if these highly stable assets continue to perform. The company is continuing to look at deals and says 2013′s acquisitions could be as nice as last year’s.
• Retail Opportunity Investments reported $0.19 per share in FFO, and the company continues to grow quickly and strongly. Occupancy was up 110 bps year over year, to 93.4%, while same-store cash net operating income grew at a very strong 7.9% clip. With 23.5% debt-to-total-market cap, ROIC has a lot of room to leverage its balance sheet to grow its portfolio. I expect more greatness from the company. It’s up 20% (not including dividends) for 11 months.
• Annaly’s adjusted earnings came in at $0.47 per share, compared with $0.54 in the year-ago quarter, and leverage is up to 6.6, from 5.8. Book value per share slipped sequentially, from $15.85, to $15.19. The interest rate spread declined sequentially and year over year and currently stands at just 0.91%. That continues to augur declining common dividends, and it’s one of the reason I moved to the preferred stock.
• Exelon reported sales and earnings per share that both topped analysts’ estimates. The company reaffirmed its previously announced 2013 guidance of $2.35 to $2.65 per share. The utility is thinking about investing as much as $3 billion over the next five years in natural gas exploration, solar assets, and other projects.
• Seaspan returned in its usual steady-as-she-goes numbers, with revenue up 7.5% and cash available for distribution climbing 2.3%. The latter number is the one dividend investors want to keep growing briskly. The company continues to grow its fleet over the next couple years, which should help dividends move in the right direction. The stock looks a little pricy right now, and I won’t be surprised to see its yield rise back to above 6%.
• Plum Creek reported growing revenue 1% year over year, but earnings nearly doubled, from $29 million to $56 million. Management highlighted the strength the company is seeing in each business segment and says it’s expecting good cash flow from the timber and manufacturing segments in 2013. Demand for lumber is keeping sawlog prices up for the foreseeable future.

Dividend news:

• AT&T went ex-dividend on April 8 and paid out $0.45 per share on May 1.
• Southern went ex-dividend on May 2 and pays out $0.5075 per share on June 6.
• Exelon goes ex-dividend on May 13 and pays out $0.31 per share on June 10.
• Seaspan goes ex-dividend on May 16 and pays out $0.3125 per share on May 30.

All that, of course, means more money coming into our pockets.

It’s fun to sit back and get paid, and with the market volatility, we might have a good chance to reinvest those dividends at good prices. Europe continues to be an absolute mess, and continued bad news will probably have stocks plunging again. If they do, I’ll be inclined to pick more shares up.

Foolish bottom line
I’ve been a fan of big dividends for a while, and I think this portfolio will outperform the market over time through the power of dividends. As I promised in the original article, I’ll continue to track and report on the portfolio’s progress, including news on these companies.

If you like dividends, consider the 12 tickers above along with the 9 names from a brand-new, free report from Motley Fool’s expert analysts called “Secure Your Future With 9 Rock-Solid Dividend Stocks.” Today I invite you to download it at no cost to you. To get instant access to the names of these 9 high yielders, simply click here — it’s free.

The article The World’s Best Dividend Portfolio originally appeared on Fool.com.

Jim Royal, Ph.D

., owns shares of the 12 portfolio stocks mentioned in the table.
The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Infrastructure, Exelon, National Grid, Retail Opportunity Investments, Seaspan, Southern, and Vodafone and owns shares of Brookfield Infrastructure, Philip Morris, Retail Opportunity Investments, Ryman Hospitality, and Seaspan. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services

free for 30 days

. We Fools don’t all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that

considering a diverse range of insights

makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a

disclosure policy

.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

We’d all like to invest like the legendary Warren Buffett, turning thousands into millions or more. Buffett analyzes companies by calculating return on invested capital, or ROIC, to help determine whether a company has an economic moat — the ability to earn returns on its money above that money’s cost.

In this series, we examine several companies in a single industry to determine their ROIC. Let’s look at Union Pacific and three of its industry peers, to see how efficiently they use cash.

Of course, it’s not the only metric in value investing, but ROIC may be the most important one. By determining a company’s ROIC, you can see how well it’s using the cash you entrust to it and whether it’s actually creating value for you. Simply put, it divides a company’s operating profit by how much investment it took to get that profit. The formula is:

ROIC = net operating profit after taxes / Invested capital

(Get further detail on the nuances of the formula.)

This one-size-fits-all calculation cuts out many of the legal accounting tricks (such as excessive debt) that managers use to boost earnings numbers, and it provides you with an apples-to-apples way to evaluate businesses, even across industries. The higher the ROIC, the more efficiently the company uses capital.

Ultimately, we’re looking for companies that can invest their money at rates that are higher than the cost of capital, which for most businesses is between 8% and 12%. Ideally, we want to see ROIC above 12%, at a minimum, and a history of increasing returns, or at least steady returns, which indicate some durability to the company’s economic moat.

Here are the ROIC figures for Colgate and three industry peers over a few periods.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Union Pacific and Canadian National Railway have comparable returns on invested capital close to the 10% range. But while Union Pacific has grown its ROIC significantly from five years ago, Canadian National Railway hasn’t shown much growth. CSX offers returns on invested capital at nearly 8%, and while its returns are down from last year, they’ve increased from five years ago. Norfolk Southern offers returns on invested capital at exactly 7% — the same as five years ago.

Union Pacific, Canadian National Railway, CSX, and Norfolk Southern have all suffered from a struggling economy, but high energy prices have helped them remain somewhat resilient as companies turn to cheaper methods for transporting their goods. Canadian National Railway and Union Pacific have also managed to gain significant advantages from insufficient pipeline coverage in North Dakota, which has forced energy companies to turn to them as a way to ship their energy from the Bakken Shale. Union Pacific’s lack of heavy exposure to coal shipping has also helped shelter it from some of the revenue costs faced by CSX and Norfolk Southern, which have suffered from a reduced demand for coal.

Businesses with consistently high ROIC show that they’re efficiently using capital. They also have the ability to treat shareholders well, because they can then use their extra cash to pay out dividends to us, buy back shares, or further invest in their franchise. And healthy and growing dividends are something that Warren Buffett has long loved.

The price of becoming the world’s greatest investor is that Warren Buffett can no longer make many of types of investments that made him rich in the first place. Find out about one such opportunity in “The Stock Buffett Wishes He Could Buy.” The free report details a sector of the economy Buffett’s heavily invested in right now and exactly why he can’t buy one attractive company in that sector. Click here to keep reading. 

The article Does Union Pacific Pass Buffett’s Test? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Jim Royal has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Canadian National Railway. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don’t all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

We’d all like to invest like the legendary Warren Buffett, turning thousands into millions or more. Buffett analyzes companies by calculating return on invested capital, or ROIC, to help determine whether a company has an economic moat — the ability to earn returns on its money above that money’s cost.

In this series, we examine several companies in a single industry to determine their ROIC. Let’s look at Union Pacific and three of its industry peers, to see how efficiently they use cash.

Of course, it’s not the only metric in value investing, but ROIC may be the most important one. By determining a company’s ROIC, you can see how well it’s using the cash you entrust to it and whether it’s actually creating value for you. Simply put, it divides a company’s operating profit by how much investment it took to get that profit. The formula is:

ROIC = net operating profit after taxes / Invested capital

(Get further detail on the nuances of the formula.)

This one-size-fits-all calculation cuts out many of the legal accounting tricks (such as excessive debt) that managers use to boost earnings numbers, and it provides you with an apples-to-apples way to evaluate businesses, even across industries. The higher the ROIC, the more efficiently the company uses capital.

Ultimately, we’re looking for companies that can invest their money at rates that are higher than the cost of capital, which for most businesses is between 8% and 12%. Ideally, we want to see ROIC above 12%, at a minimum, and a history of increasing returns, or at least steady returns, which indicate some durability to the company’s economic moat.

Here are the ROIC figures for Colgate and three industry peers over a few periods.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Union Pacific and Canadian National Railway have comparable returns on invested capital close to the 10% range. But while Union Pacific has grown its ROIC significantly from five years ago, Canadian National Railway hasn’t shown much growth. CSX offers returns on invested capital at nearly 8%, and while its returns are down from last year, they’ve increased from five years ago. Norfolk Southern offers returns on invested capital at exactly 7% — the same as five years ago.

Union Pacific, Canadian National Railway, CSX, and Norfolk Southern have all suffered from a struggling economy, but high energy prices have helped them remain somewhat resilient as companies turn to cheaper methods for transporting their goods. Canadian National Railway and Union Pacific have also managed to gain significant advantages from insufficient pipeline coverage in North Dakota, which has forced energy companies to turn to them as a way to ship their energy from the Bakken Shale. Union Pacific’s lack of heavy exposure to coal shipping has also helped shelter it from some of the revenue costs faced by CSX and Norfolk Southern, which have suffered from a reduced demand for coal.

Businesses with consistently high ROIC show that they’re efficiently using capital. They also have the ability to treat shareholders well, because they can then use their extra cash to pay out dividends to us, buy back shares, or further invest in their franchise. And healthy and growing dividends are something that Warren Buffett has long loved.

The price of becoming the world’s greatest investor is that Warren Buffett can no longer make many of types of investments that made him rich in the first place. Find out about one such opportunity in “The Stock Buffett Wishes He Could Buy.” The free report details a sector of the economy Buffett’s heavily invested in right now and exactly why he can’t buy one attractive company in that sector. Click here to keep reading. 

The article Does Union Pacific Pass Buffett’s Test? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Jim Royal has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Canadian National Railway. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don’t all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.