The Little-Known Way To Reinvest In Stocks At A Discount

Do you DRIP? If not, then you may be falling behind the times — and your portfolio might be suffering the consequences.

Don’t worry; DRIP isn’t the latest dance craze or some new millennial technobabble phrase. It stands for Dividend Reinvestment Plan, and they’ve been around for decades. But as my colleague Amy Calistri points out in a recent issue of The Daily Paycheck, too few investors take advantage of these plans.

For the uninitiated, DRIPs began as a way for companies to offer shareholders a way to invest directly with them. That means no broker (or brokerage fees). You can simply buy shares by enrolling online or by calling directly, and then the company will reinvest your dividends back into the stock for you.

Many investors aren’t aware of such programs, because companies aren’t allowed to advertise them. But today, many online brokerages offer their own DRIP service, which negates the need to deal with a company directly. To counter this, some companies will even offer you a discount on the current share price as an added perk for being a loyal shareholder and dealing directly with them. So Amy did some digging to find stocks with DRIPs that offer a discount to shareholders and shared her findings with subscribers.

I’ll let her take things from here…

As it turns out, there are a number of companies that offer DRIPs with a discount. They are just really hard to find … It’s even hard to find them on a company’s website. Sometimes you have to dig through legal prospectuses to find them.

After a few weeks of research, I turned up six companies that offer a 5% discount on reinvested shares.

Amy’s least favorite stocks on this list are Agnico Eagle Mines (NYSE: AEM) and Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD). Here’s what she had to say:

Like all mining companies, Agnico Eagle Mines has struggled in this environment of low commodity prices. And today, its meager 1.1% yield doesn’t seem like enough compensation for a risky sector such as precious metal mining. Toronto-Dominion Bank’s 4.0% yield is tempting, but Canada’s economy is currently in a recession — another victim of low commodity prices. And even though TD has done a good job growing its dividends when valued in Canadian dollars, its dividend valued in U.S. dollars has been dropping.

Amy went on to note her two favorites of the group: Independent Bank Corp (Nasdaq: INDB) and Healthcare Realty Trust (NYSE: HR).

Independent Bank Corp’s yield is on the lower end of the scale, but it has a solid track record for dividend growth — even through the financial crisis. In the last five years, INDB has raised its dividend five times, increasing it by 44%.

Founded in 1907, INDB is the holding company for Rockland Trust Company, providing banking services in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Although its territory is small, it has a market cap of more than $1 billion and has been rated one of the nation’s top 25 healthiest publicly traded banks by Forbes.

Also, if the Federal Reserve actually gets around to raising rates, keep in mind that banks and insurance companies do well in a rising rate environment. You can read INDB’s dividend reinvestment plan prospectus by following this link.

If you want to read more about Amy’s other favorite — Healthcare Realty Trust, which yields 5% — then you’ll need to check out her newsletter, The Daily Paycheck.

We’ve sung the praises of Amy’s dividend reinvestment strategy time and time again here in StreetAuthority. Simply put, we think it’s one of the easiest, most surefire ways to build long-term wealth in the market. And by taking advantage of the 5% discount these companies offer on their share price, it makes Amy’s strategy all the more compelling. To learn more about Amy’s Daily Paycheck Retirement Plan, go here.