Blackrock Advisors Llc is a giant fund manager with $95 billion worth of assets under management. This article shows five of the top dividend stocks held by this Plainboro, New Jersey-based asset management firm. Dividend income-seekers can take a look at these stocks to see if these are worth including in their portfolio or not.
Most of these have been experiencing positive earnings surprises, positive quarterly revenue growth, double-digit profit margins, and consistently huge increases in dividend payments.
Sources: www.finviz.com, www.marketwatch.com, and www.whalewisdom.com; Data retrieved March 29, 2013.
Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA)
The media and technology company’s quarterly revenue has grown 5.95% year-over-year. It currently enjoys a higher than usual profit margin at 12.57%, and although it had slightly missed the latest earnings estimate by a small margin, the company’s core operations are exhibiting a healthy trend with increasing net operating cash flow. In 2012, this grew by 3.5%, and from 2008 to 2012 net operating cash flow grew by an annual average rate of over 9%. Therefore, Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA)’s payout ratio based on cash flow remains at a sustainable level of 10.84%. Dividend income seekers can also sit back and relax as the company continues to have an adequate level of free cash flow, at $7.5 billion in 2012, slightly lower than 2011’s $7.8 billion, but notably higher than 2010’s $5 billion. With these performances, and a P/E ratio of 18.33, it’s no wonder that Comcast’s stock price has been rallying robustly. The company’s EPS forecast for 2013 has been revised upward twice. Based on these indicators, the stock remains an attractive investment.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal spent about $4.8 billion to obtain the rights for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics. The company had recently reported that it does not expect to make huge earnings from this multi-billion investment, but this should give the company much greater exposure and content that it needs to narrow the lead that industry leader ESPN enjoys. It has also recently announced an improvement in the speed of its XFINITY Internet plan at no additional cost, which can potentially boost the company’s popularity.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is in for some momentum in 2013. This is shown by company’s high profitability, at a net margin of 21.20% and an ROE of 22.6%, and positive revenue growth combined with a low P/E ratio of 15.72 and a forward ratio of 9.14. Income-seeking investors can only laud its 20% payout ratio based on cash flow, and an outstanding average growth of 16% in its annualized dividend payment. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has recently surpassed its earnings estimates by a margin of 8%, thanks to lively core business operations. In fact, the net operating cash flow increased in 2012 by 17%. This brought the free cash flow to $22.94 billion in 2012.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is now loosening up its unsuccessful multi-billion dollar acquisition AQuantive through its deal with Facebook for its Atlas Advertiser Suite, a tool that can elevate the competition between Facebook and Google for online display ads. The deal has just been approved by the US Federal Trade Commission. Another bit of positive news that can likely contribute to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s upturn is its recent win over the US ruling in its Xbox case.
