As my nick name implies, I’m living
in the deep woods, an area sitting on top of a hill full of tall trees. It is a
resort like area I thoroughly enjoy now. But when we first came to see the
house at its open house, I didn’t like it at all, an old property not well
maintained both interiorly and exteriorly. I’m typically a vision guy usually
attracted by its appearance and the property looks not pretty to me at all when
I first saw it. But my wife, a naturally born real estate “expert” and interior designer in my eyes,
immediately fell in love with it at the first sight and convinced me to make an
order. We actually ended up with even a further discount to an already very
competitive asking price. Apparently not only I not so interested in it at that
time. So why my wife was so much attracted by it? She educated me with this
lesson: nearly everything can be changed and upgraded for a housel except
location. And this house is sitting in a perfect location she was looking for:
in a woody area surrounded by many million dollar houses on top of a hill with
great views. Very importantly it’s mostly used rooms (kitchen and dining/living
rooms) are facing to the south and slightly towards the east, a perfect facing
not so easy to get. I of course realized this only after we moved in: in the
winter time during good days, our south side rooms are always with full of
sunshine, making the house incredibly warm and cozy. After many upgrades done
in the past few years, the house is really attractive to me now, thanks to my
wife’s unique vision. Although nothing to do with my investment idea today, let
me spoil myself a bit by abusing your time for now to show off some photos about
it. Agree with me that it is a beautiful area to live in?
But anything has its cost, small or
big. No difference to this perfect house we love. Since this is a very matured
area, we still see all the power lines exposed in the air. As such, they are
very vulnerable to the damages that may be caused by bad weathers like strong
wind or snow storm, especially in such a woody area. Since we moved in for 5
years now, we have experienced power outage from time to time due to poor
weathers but it has almost always been recovered within hours, except this time
with the historical snow storm hitting our area on Mar 7, Wed. Let me post a
few photos about the snow storm here. It was brutal but ironically was very beautiful, wasn't?!
We went to bed without power and heating
that night expecting to get the power recovered by the morning. But by the
morning we kind of awoke in the coldness still without power and were sadly
notified that the power would not be restored till Sat. Obviously we could not continue to stay there
without power, heating and more importantly without water (as we are using the
well water that needs a pump). So we had to clear our driveway to go out to go to
our second home fortunately not so much impacted by the snow storm. While I was
plowing the snow, I suddenly thought about this company that is doing very
boring business but generating very reliable revenues and paying great and
increasing dividends for years. This is the company called Compass Minerals (CMP), a leading miner and seller of
road salt. Here is the CMP business: Compass
Minerals is a provider of essential minerals that solve nature's challenges,
including salt for winter roadway safety and other consumer, industrial and
agricultural uses; specialty plant nutrition minerals for the quality and yield
of crops, and specialty chemicals for water treatment and other industrial
processes.
This is certainly not a fancy and
sexy business and stock by any means and probably no one would talk about it
but I like it for its sound and stable business with reliable incomes for
investors. It started paying dividends in 2004 and has managed to increase its
annual payout every year for the past 13 years. On top of continuous paying
dividends, it has increased its dividends by 200%, or 15% annual growth in
average. It is now trading 20% below its recent high with a forward PE about 15
and paying a very respectful dividend of 4.5%. I think it is a good long-term dividend
stock for consideration that you may turn the winter snowing into a cash
machine to pay your retirement life!
By the way, I literally cheated death this time.
We have a long driveway lined up with tall trees. I knew it might not be safe
to plough snow during the snowing day with very wet snow piling up on the trees
as some branches could easily fall without warning. But I couldn’t wait and
decided to do it anyway. So I asked my wife to check if I was still standing up
from time to time. Fortunately I completed the work without incident but just
minutes after I walked back in, a big branch trunk indeed fell down to the driveway.
It could really kill anyone if falling onto him/her. So if you are also living
in a woody area, be very carefully during the windy or snowing day under trees.
It could be life-threatening!
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