The Southern Company (SO), Vodafone Group Plc (ADR) (VOD), and The World’s Best Dividend Portfolio

The Southern Company (NYSE:SO) experienced at an explosion at Plant Bowen, north of Atlanta. The coal-fired plant is one of the largest power generators in the United States. All workers were accounted for shortly after the incident.

Fellow Fool Dan Caplinger grades Philip Morris and gives the tobacco giant a middling score. Though he (rightly) doesn’t ding the company for its lack of equity and therefore immeasurable return on equity, the score of 4 out of 8 looks worse for those omissions. In this company’s case, it’s less vital to have equity because it’s such a steady cash generator. In fact, many of the best cash generators run with little equity on their balance sheet. They just don’t need to retain their earnings. Dan also notes the increasing legal pressure on Philip Morris in overseas markets.

Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE:NLY) has been a popular stock for the past few years because of its hefty dividend. But Fool John Maxfield has long been skeptical of the company, in particular management. Now executives are asking the company to externalize its management structure to a business owned by them, a possibility that creates clear conflicts of interest. Watch John in this video to see what he thinks of the move.

Dividends and earnings announcements
Here’s the recent news on earnings and dividends.

Dividend news:

Philip Morris went ex-dividend on March 26 and pays out $0.85 per share on April 12.

Annaly Series C went ex-dividend on Feb. 27 and paid out almost $0.48 per share on April 1.

Ryman Hospitality went ex-dividend on March 26 and paid out $0.50 per share on April 11.

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.

The article The World’s Best Dividend Portfolio originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Jim Royal.

Jim Royal, Ph.D., owns shares of the 12 portfolio stocks mentioned in the table and is short April $20 calls on Seaspan. 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.

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