LOTM: BDC Dividends by The Numbers

In the 1980s, the Federal government created a venture-like investment vehicle known as a “business development company”(BDC). Congress designed BDCs to help emerging U.S. businesses raise funds to fuel job growth. BDCs provide capital and supply financing to companies through a wide variety of mechanisms, including equity, debt and hybrid financial instruments. The majority of BDC income is generated by loans to client companies. Some loans are secured, and some loans have less secure backing. This is something to check and keep in mind if we are moving into a recessionary period.

BDC’s by legal definition must pay 90% of taxable income to it shareholders as a dividend.

Since this is a pass-through of income, 10K’s will likely be issued by the companies to shareholders for their tax returns. Consult your tax attorney for your specific situation’s application.

Please note that since distributions are based on the originators income, dividends will vary with economic times. In difficult times like the Great Recession of 2008, many BDCs, reduced or stopped paying dividends to adapt to the environment. At the time. Owning shares of a BDC, is no different than being an owner of your own business. We adjust to the times.

Below, we have listed Business Development Companies (BDC) that are rated Buy or Strong Buy as screened by the Quant System created by Seeking Alpha. Price momentum, up or down, is factored into the Quantitative methodology. Therefore, a falling stock price “could” result in a down grade from buy to a hold or sell rating. In addition, we have also listed Wall Street Analysts rating for these companies. It helps to have a contrasting or different opinion.

The number after the Buy or Strong Buy is the 0 to 5 numerical rating given by the Quant System used.

A screenshot of a chart

Description automatically generated

Suggested ways to view this list might be:

  1. Own a package so you don’t get attachment to any company at this time. In time, you might know the company better and this might change. Pick five names or even ten names to invest in, with equal dollars into each. You might
  2. Select the highest dividend rates from the Forward (FWD) Yield column.
  3. Cross reference this with Earnings Per Share (EPS) FWD. Earnings are where the dividend comes from so don’t buy falling earnings / falling dividends. Careful looking might disclose a one-time event, however some of you might not want to dig that deep.
  4. Rising revenue suggest the possibility of rising earnings and therefore rising dividends.
  5. Or you might just select the top five or top ten based on the ratings system and keep it simple.

This is a probability game so get as many probabilities on your side of the table as you can and adjust to the times it does not work. That is called risk management so understand yourself enough to know in advance what you are comfortable with and what you are not comfortable with.

Hope this helps. Best always – Tom

#bdc #businessdevelopmentcompany #income #dividends #incomestocks

For Actionable Stock Ideas, consider a subscription to Tom’s LOTM Blog.

LOTM Style – We are more a controlled speculator, than diversified investor or short-term trader. We allow 100% loss/risk on some purchases. Often, we dollar-cost-average into losing positions. Volatility is our friend, not something to be feared. We let our winners win, as much as possible. We do not like paying taxes. We love value, yet watch charts. Our goal is to find value stocks that might double in one to three-years.

See our website for our doubling to a Million$ game. We were playing this game of doubles before Patrick Ben-David talked about it. Ideas in this blog are highly volatile and only for use by those who are comfortable with high-risk, high-reward investments.

Written October 25, 2023, by Tom Linzmeier, for Tom’s LOTM Blog at https://lotm.substack.com/.

Accounts related to LOTM and Tom Linzmeier can & will, buy or sell securities at any time.
LOTM Research & Consulting Service
* An account related to LOTM holds a position in this security.
Neither LOTM nor Tom Linzmeier is a Registered Investment Advisor.
Consult your investment advisor for investment advice appropriate for your situation.
To Unsubscribe, please select “return” and type Unsubscribe in the subject line.
Tom’s LOTM Blog page https://lotm.substack.com/

 402 total views,  2 views today

This entry was posted in Tom's Blog. Bookmark the permalink.