Tiffany & Co. Offers 17 Consecutive Annual Dividend Hikes (TIF)

Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF) offers its shareholders a reliable annual dividend hikes streak of nearly two decades and a double-digit percentage asset appreciation since the beginning of 2019.

The most recent quarterly dividend hike is just the last in the current streak of 17 consecutive annual dividend hikes. Furthermore, Tiffany failed to boost its annual dividend only once over the past two decades. Instead of a hike, the company paid the same $0.40 quarterly dividend for 12 consecutive periods — from the third quarter of 2000 through the second quarter of 2003. However, after resuming dividend hikes in the second half of 2003, Tiffany & Co. managed to maintain its current streak of consecutive annual dividend hikes for nearly two decades.

Tiffany & Co. managed to meet or exceed earnings expectations of Wall Street analysts’ in the first three quarters of 2018. The company will hold its earnings conference call to announce the fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 results on March 22, 2019. The company already reported flat holiday sales for last year. However, despite no growth in holiday sales, the company still expects record sales and net earnings for the full year.

A potential report of record sales and earnings next week could boost the share price higher to complement the current dividend payouts and offer dividend-seeking investors the benefit of above-average capital gains to accompany the reliable dividend income. However, to claim eligibility for the next round of dividend distributions, interested investors should take a long position in the Tiffany & Co’s stock prior to the March 19, ex-dividend date. The company will distribute the next round of dividend payouts to all eligible shareholders of record on the upcoming April 10, 2019, pay date.

Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF)

Headquartered in New York, New York, and founded in 1837, Tiffany & Co., designs, manufactures and retails jewelry products and accessories. The company operates through five geographically based segments. With a 45% share of global net sales, the Americas region is Tiffany’s largest. The Asia-Pacific region excludes Japan and accounted for 26% of net sales in fiscal 2017 — the most recent full-year data currently available until full-year data release on March 22, 2019. The Japan market is its own region with a 14% share of net sales. With a 12% share of net sales, the Europe market, which encompasses operations in 12 countries, is smaller than the Japan market. Lastly, the Other segment accounts for just 3% of the company’s net sales from stores operated under a licensing agreement in the United Arab Emirates. As of January 31, 2010, the company operated more than 300 stores worldwide.

The company’s current $0.55 quarterly dividend amount represents a 10% enhancement above the $0.50 dividend payout from the same period last year. The new dividend amount is equivalent to a $2.20 annualized payout, which currently yields 2.3%. Compared to its own 2% average over the past five years, the company’s current yield is 14.7% higher.

In addition to outperforming its own five-year average, TIF’s current yield is also 16.5% higher than the 1.97% simple average dividend yield of the overall Services sector. Additionally, Tiffany & Co’s current yield also outperformed the 1.62% simple average yield of the company’s peers in the Specialty Retail industry segment by more than 41%.

Since skipping a dividend hike in 2002, Tiffany & Co. enhanced its total annual dividend payout amount almost 14-fold. That level of advancement is equivalent to an average annual growth rate of 16.7% over the past 17 years. Even as the total annual amount rose and the encountered diminishing growth rates, the company still managed to maintain a growth rate of nearly 10% over the past five years and 11% over the past three years.

While Tiffany & Co. exhibits a steady record of long-term asset appreciation, the share price still did not fully recover from a significant decline in the fourth quarter of 2018. Even the dividend payouts were not enough to fully offset those losses and only managed to limit the total loss to 1.9% over the past year. Additionally, the share price’s decline early in the five-year period limited the total returns to 10.6%. However, over the past three years, the shareholders enjoyed total returns of more than 45%.

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