CENTERPOINT ENERGY (CNP) INCREASES DIVIDEND 14.5%!

Collected my first dividend payment from CNP for 2014 and was happy to see they've increased their payout by 14.5%.  According to their annual report, things are going quite well for CenterPoint.  I wrote a post last year about the low interest rates being good for utilities, since they rely heavily on financing for ongoing operations.  Given the Fed has declared interest in keeping rates low for the next few years, I'm still thinking utilities will do well.  Overall return for CNP was 24.7%, beating out the S&P 500 Utilities Index average of just 8.8%.  I've been a long term investor in CNP and I like what I read in their annual report, so I'll most likely continue to hold this stock for quite some time.

With 10% of the stocks in my current portfolio (HBI and CNP) increasing dividend payouts, I'm hopeful of seeing more from some of my other holdings before the year is out.  While dividend income continues to rise each month from ongoing cash investments and reinvested dividends, companies that increase their payouts can add quite dramatically to the rate of compounding over the years, so I'm understandably excited about this.  I've been reading a lot of articles about companies with big stockpiles of cash who are expected to start returning cash to shareholders through dividend increases and stock buybacks, so I'm pretty certain I'll see a least a couple more of my holdings increasing their payouts before the year is over.