I just purchased an additional 25 shares of Verizon Wireless (VZ) today.
They were already a core holding in my portfolio and now make up the largest % holding at a little over 10% now. This will be my third purchase of VZ since starting the portfolio. I bought 33 shares on 09/10/10 for 30.79, 27 shares on 09/27/11 at 37.04, 25 shares on 03/21/12 for 39.90 and have dripped the whole time.
A few of my reasons for purchase:
I have used them for services and been very happy since they bought out MCI Worldcom in 1998. (yes this one is biased)
They are the nation’s largest wireless carrier
They pay a nice dividend of .50 quarterly (about 5% as of today’s prices) and are expected to increase this by early November.
VZ has their 4G LTE in about 200 markets and expects to double this by year’s end.
They have consistently increased dividends each year for the last 7 years even through the latest credit crisis.
Their earnings estimates for 2012-2015 are 2.49, 2.78, 3.10, 3.22 according to Etrade.
With earnings growing in the double digits I believe they will be able to continue to increase their dividend for the forseeable future.