Want Safe Income? This Stock Raised Its Dividend in the Last 3 Recessions.
Dividend stocks have long held a pivotal place in the portfolio of investors who value stability and income. Realty Income (NYSE: O) is considered by many to be among the best of the group, for reasons that include management's commitment to boosting its payouts every year, year after year, through thick and thin.
That "thin" includes the three recessions we've seen so far in the 21st century: the dot-com fallout in 2001, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 collapse of 2020. The first one was relatively mild, but the second was the most severe since the Great Depression by some measures, and the third was short but quite convulsive.
Retailers were hit particularly hard by the pandemic shutdowns, and many of their publicly held landlords -- in the form of real estate investment trusts (REITs) -- were forced to cut or suspend their dividends. But not Realty Income, owner of more than 13,100 properties, most of them under long-term, net-lease deals with commercial clients.
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Source Fool.com
