The following is an excerpt from 5 “Oddball” Dividend Stocks With Big Yields, originally published on Kiplinger’s.
It’s not the easiest market out there for income investors. With bond yields being depressed for so many years (and still extremely low by any historical standard) investors have scoured the globe for yield, which has pushed the yields on many traditional income investments – namely, bonds and dividend stocks – to levels far too low to be taken seriously.
Even after rising over the past several months, the yield on the 10-year Treasury is still only 2.9%, and the 30-year Treasury yields all of 3.2%. (Don’t spend that all in one place!) The utility sector, which many investors have been using as a bond substitute, yields only 3.4%. Yields on real estate investment trusts (REITs) are almost competitive at 4.4%, but only when you consider the low-yield competition.
Bond yields have been rising since September, due in part to expectations of greater economic growth and the inflation that generally comes with it. This has put pressure on all income-focused stocks. This little yield spike might not be over just yet, either – especially if inflation creeps higher this year.
Even if bond yields top out today and start to drift lower rather than higher, yields just aren’t high enough in most traditional income sectors to be worthwhile. So today, we’re going to cast the net a little wider. We’re going to take a look at five quirky dividend stocks that are a little out of the mainstream. Our goal is to secure high yields while also allowing for fast enough dividend growth to stay in front of inflation.
The GEO Group
Few companies are as quirky – or have quite the pariah status – as The GEO Group (GEO). GEO is a private operator of prisons that is organized as a real estate investment trust, or REIT.
Yes, it’s a prison REIT.
Prison overcrowding has been a problem for years. It seems that while getting tough on crime is popular with voters, paying the bill to build expensive new prisons is not.
This is about as far from a feel-good stock as you can get. It ranks alongside tobacco stocks on the scale of political incorrectness. The sheer ugliness of its business partially explains why it sports such a high dividend yield at well above 8%.
It’s also worth noting that this stock is riskier than everything else on this list. The U.S. is slowly moving in the direction of legalization of soft drugs like marijuana. While full legalization at the federal level isn’t yet on the horizon, you have to consider that a significant potential risk to GEO’s business model. Roughly half of all prisoners in federal prisons are there on drug-related convictions. At the state level, that number is about 16%.
GEO likely would survive drug legalization, as the privatization of public services is part of a bigger trend for cash-strapped governments. But it would definitely slow the REIT’s growth and it would seriously raise questions of dividend sustainability.
Furthermore, prison properties have very little resale value. You can turn an old warehouse into a trendy urban apartment building. But a prison? That’s a tougher sell.
So again, GEO is a riskier pick. But with a yield of more than 8%, you’re at least getting paid well to accept that risk.
To read the rest of the article, please see 5 “Oddball” Dividend Stocks With Big Yields,
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