In my three portfolios I have a total of 105 holdings. From individual stocks, to money market funds, to closed end funds the range of yields from each goes from less than 1% to over 11%. When looking at all three portfolios combined they yield about 5.6% annually.
Today I’m looking at the lowest yield stock I hold. The yield is a meager 0.72% as of this writing. It’s in the materials sector and is rated “Very Safe” by Simply Safe Dividends. This company is Albemarle (ALB).
Incorporated in 1993 and headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Albemarle is a leading global developer, manufacturer, and marketer of highly engineered specialty chemicals, such as Lithium, Bromine, and Catalysts.
Their Lithium segment develops lithium-based materials including lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, butyllithium, and lithium aluminum hydride. Lithium is an essential component in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, high performance greases, car tires, rubber soles, and plastic bottles. They provide technical services, including the handling and use of reactive lithium products, recycling services for lithium containing by products and lithium metal and other reagents.
Their Bromine segment includes products used in fire safety and other specialty chemical applications. Their fire safety technology enables the use of plastics in high heat applications by enhancing the flame resistant properties. The products that benefit from this technology include plastic enclosures for consumer electronics, printed circuit boards, wire and cable products, electrical connectors, textiles, and foam insulation. This segment includes specialty chemicals such as elemental bromine, alkyl bromides, inorganic bromides, brominated powdered activated carbon, and other bromine chemicals. These specialty bromine chemicals are used in chemical synthesis, oil and gas well drilling, mercury control, water purification, beef and poultry processing and other applications.
Their Catalysts segment is comprised of three main product lines. Clean fuel technologies, fluidized catalytic cracking, and performance catalyst solutions. Clean fuels technology is primarily composed of hydroprocessing catalysts and isomerization and akylation catalysts. Fluidized catalyst systems assist in high yield cracking of refinery petroleum streams into derivative higher-value products like transportation fuels and propylene. Performance catalyst solutions are used in the manufacture of alpha-olefins, polyolefins, and electronics.
Albemarle (ALB) has a current dividend yield of 0.72% and is rated as “Very Safe” by SimplySafeDividends. I hold ALB in my Low Yield Portfolio. In total SYM is 0.1% of my portfolio.
Why do I hold a stock with such a low yield? The company is rock solid. They paid out a dividend for 27 years straight and even increased their dividend during the great recession of 2008. Their dividend growth over the last 20 years is 9% and their stock price is on a steady upward trend. The price of stock exploded recently like everything else post pandemic and I don’t expect that kind of growth to continue. The price appreciation over the last two years allowed me to sell some shares twice so I could put that money into higher yielding stocks. In short putting money into ALB is no worse than having cash in a safe at home. The upside is the stock price appreciation and a dividend yield as good as a passbook savings account.