Monday, February 28, 2011

A New Player

We added Fifth Street Finance (FSC) to the Yield Generator portion of the portfolio.  FSC has a dividend yield of 9.2% and is a business development company that lends to and invests in small to mid-sized companies in connection with investments by private equity sponsors.  For example, FSC has a $12.4 Million Second Lien Term Loan with Filet of Chicken, a company that processes and sells chicken products to national restaurant chains, chicken processors, and grocery stores.  To maintain its corporate structure, FSC must pay out at least 90% of its taxable income which sounds very REIT like. 

Here's the dividend yield of our current Yield Generator lineup:

CPL  6.6%
FSC  9.2%
KMR  6.2%
BPT  8.5%
PGX  6.7%

KMR is a special case in that the dividend is in additional shares of stock rather than cash, but 6.2% is my best estimate.

Our informal sell signal for these guys is when the dividend yield drops under 6%.  Since we purchased these investments mostly for their dividends, it doesn't seem logical to use our standard 13 week / 34 week moving average crossover for avoiding colossal losses. 

One last thought.  It turns out nearly half the Fiat Fantasy holdings pay a dividend of more than 2%.  Somehow I find that reassuring.  Now if only we could get the precious metal holdings to pay dividends.        

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