Dividend Aristocrats Part 25 of 52: C R Bard Inc (BCR)

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Consumer products companies have it easy. When you buy a box (or 4) of Kimberly Clark Corp (NYSE:KMB) Kleenex, you and Kimberly-Clark both know you will be buying more soon.

When you buy a The Coca-Cola Co (NYSE:KO) soda, you aren’t going to drink it forever… You’ll be back to buy more.

What if someone could apply this buy-dispose-repeat process to the medical supply industry? Certainly, that would be a very profitable company.

CR Bard

C R Bard Inc (BCR) does just that.

In fact, 90% of the company’s products are single use products. You use them once, then toss them out.

The company sells catheters, stents, ports, drug-eluding balloons, and surgical repair products (among others). C R Bard’s products are the health industry’s answer to disposable consumer products.

Among the top shareholders of C R Bard are Donald Yacktman’s Yacktman Asset Management and Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies. However, both investors reduced their stakes during the third quarter. Yacktman unloaded 1.31 million shares and reported ownership of 1.46 million shares, while Renaissance disclosed holding 890,900 shares, down by 66,000 shares on the quarter.

CR Bard’s Business in Detail

C R Bard breaks its operations into 4 primary segments.  The image below gives a rundown of each segment, along with the percentage of total sales each segment generated in fiscal 2014 for C R Bard.

BCR Segments

Source:  C R  Bard Annual Report, page 12

C R Bard currently has a market cap of $13.5 billion; it has grown for a long time. C R Bard was founded in 1907 in New York City by Charles R Bard (who named the company after himself).

CR Bard Is An Unusual Dividend Aristocrat

C R Bard has increased its dividend payments for 44 consecutive years.  The company’s long history of consecutive dividend increases makes C R Bard a Dividend Aristocrat.

The image below shows the company’s consistent dividend growth since the 1980’s.

BCR Dividend History

Source:  Data from Yahoo! Finance

What makes C R Bard Inc (NYSE:BCR) unusual for a Dividend Aristocrat is its exceptionally low dividend yield.  The company’s stock currently offers investors a paltry dividend yield of 0.5%.

Follow Bard C R Inc (NYSE:BCR)

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