Give It Time
The market is finally settling down after the mid-term election cycle. Wednesday was a massive thrust up, Thursday was an extraordinary reversal and today was directionless. Thursday was a surprise to me, and it should not have been.
…Coronation! [SOME]
In a brief correspondence with Sure Dividend about the departure of KVUE from the list of Dividend Kings, I was informed that the CEO of a company thought to have a 26-year dividend increase streak announced a remarkable 63-year streak in the firm’s 2025 annual report. This can happen in the world of over-the-counter (OTC) stocks, where dividend histories are often less transparent and corporate achievements can remain hidden in plain sight.
Hidden in plain sight may be the perfect way to describe this Pennsylvania financial institution. Founded in 1889, it has accomplished something increasingly rare in modern banking: remaining independent while passing through six generations of the same founding family. From a small-town bank with humble beginnings, it evolved into a successful regional franchise, blending steady growth with a commitment to the communities and traditions that have defined it for well over a century.
All hail Somerset Trust Holding Co!
…Regicide [KVUE]
On 2023-12-06, I announced the coronation of Kenvue Inc. [KVUE], a business spun off from Dividend King Johnson & Johnson [JNJ]. KVUE inherited JNJ’s dividend streak and was crowned accordingly. Yet less than three years later, and without committing the usual crime of breaking its dividend growth record (abdication), the young monarch has fallen. Kimberly-Clark Corp. [KMB], a Dividend King in its own right, has absorbed the kingdom, ending KVUE’s brief reign as a standalone sovereign.
Coronation! [MCD]
Ordinarily, I would tell you a story here – one rooted in the truth, telling of a humble beginning and amazing growth, leaving out just enough detail to keep you guessing just a little bit in the event you didn’t recognize the ticker symbol in the title and your eyes hadn’t yet drifted to the bottom of the page. But this company has documentaries about its history and success. This company literally changed the world. And now they’ve announced fifty consecutive years of dividend increases.
There’s a good chance it was your first job and a good chance it will be your last meal.
All hail McDonald’s Corp!
…Exchange Offer [MDT]
Medtronic has launched a voluntary exchange offer allowing shareholders to tender MDT shares in return for shares of MiniMed [MMED], the diabetes‑focused business being spun off. The offer provides a slight economic incentive. Tendering shareholders receive more MMED value than MDT value tendered, subject to an upper limit and potential proration if the offer is oversubscribed.
…Coronation! [CSL]
It’s early 1917. Charles S. Moomy, the vice president of his father’s business, Keystone Rubber Manufacturing Company in Erie, Pennsylvania, decides he wants to go out on his own. He has been saving up and he has connections. But he’s going to stick with what he knows – and that’s rubber. And because synthetic rubber is still in its experimental stages, we’re talking natural rubber, the stuff that has to be harvested from mature trees that grow thousands of miles away. He meets with James T. Johnstone, a New York City rubber broker, who secures for him a large batch of crude rubber (most likely from southeast Asia) and invests $30,000 of his own money as well. Charles purchases $4,000 worth of rubber making machinery and gets an agreement from Montgomery Ward & Company to buy the bicycle inner tubes he plans to make.
This new company of perhaps 65 employees begins operations in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on September 12, 1917. A decade later, the company has over 300 employees and is making 10,000 inner tubes per day. But the next decade, the one that includes the era we refer to as The Great Depression, nearly bankrupts the business. It was touch and go. There were loans. There were sacrifices. And it survived.
Fast forward nearly 100 years, we have ourselves a massively successful, publicly traded company, or rather collection of companies, that can proudly say they are one of fewer than 60 companies with 50+ years of consecutive dividend increases. The headquarters are now in Scottsdale, Arizona, but they haven’t forgotten where it all began…
All hail Carlisle Companies Incorporated!
…Performance Update [7]
The Portfolio for the Ages turns four today. Let’s take this opportunity to assess its performance.
…Coronation! [SON]
In October of 1863, Major James Lide Coker is injured and captured by Union forces at the Battle of Chickamauga. After his release, and less than two years later, an undeterred Coker delivers food supplies to Confederate forces stationed in Richmond, Virginia. Upon his return home to Hartsville, South Carolina, he learns General Sherman has destroyed his family farm. When there is nothing else left in your life but land and seed, your path forward seems narrow but clear – and it isn’t tripling down on the Confederate cause. Coker borrows an old mule and a pair of oxen from an uncle and sews 100 acres of farmland with corn seed and cotton seed and the fruits of that labor and land net him a small fortune.
Fast forward 30+ years, through several successful business launches, and Major Coker is struggling to get a paper making business off the ground in his hometown. He and his namesake son have overcome a number of problems, but one sticky one remains – resin-heavy pine trees gum up the machines and make unusable paper. Eventually they perfect the process but find a lack of customers to be financially crippling. Nearly bankrupt, Major Coker makes another great pivot, replacing the cumbersome and expensive wooden cones on which yarn for textiles is threaded, with paper cones.
The entity founded in 1899 and originally known as the Southern Novelty Company would begin paying dividends in 1925 and it hasn’t stopped. And though they would deny it, they just raised their quarterly dividend for the 50th straight year.
All hail Sonoco Products Company!
…LEG to be Acquired by SGI
Today, Somnigroup International Inc [SGI] and Leggett & Platt Inc [LEG] announced that they have signed a definitive agreement pursuant to which SGI will acquire LEG in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $2.5 billion based on SGI’s closing share price of $78.06 on April 10, 2026.
However, the price on Friday is of no interest to shareholders of LEG. Under the terms of the agreement, LEG shareholders will receive 0.1455 shares of SGI in exchange for each share of LEG they own.
LEG is up over 12% and SGI over 2% as of the time of this post. But the real question is what does this mean for the largest position in the Portfolio for the Ages?
…A Uniquely Bad Day
This marks the first time since inception that every position, and the portfolio has never had more positions, declined on the same day. This was a genuinely rare event for a 24-stock portfolio well-diversified across all 11 sectors. And while SPXEW’s 1.29% drop was hardly mild — that’s a legitimately rough day by any historical standard — it still wasn’t the kind of broad‑market capitulation one would normally associate with a complete sweep across every holding.
It’s infuriating, and in my view, unmistakably tied to the reckless geopolitical decisions made less than a month ago and still unfolding today.