Dow Chemical Co (DOW), General Motors Company (GM), LyondellBasell Industries NV (LYB): Billionaire Soros’ Top Dividend Picks

Moving on to another popular dividend stock in Soros’ portfolio, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM), which sports a dividend yield of 3.18%. The automobile manufacturer is up by nearly 11.7% over the last 52 weeks, and started paying quarterly cash dividends of $0.3 only since first quarter of 2014. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) has been marred by 5 different recalls during the first half of 2014 which involved 29 million cars in North America alone. In light of this, the popularity of the company fell among hedge funds with 107 invested in the company as opposed to 118 a quarter earlier. Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway and Appaloosa Management Lp’s David Tepper held 41 million shares valued at $1.43 million and 14.68 million shares valued at $512.44 million respectively.

The last dividend stock in our list,  LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB) had the backing of 8 billionaires among those that we track, with their aggregate investment in the company being $1.48 billion at the end of 2014. Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global is one of them with 4.05 million shares vlaued at $321.47 million. Soros initiated a position in LyondellBasell by purchasing 2.83 million shares valued at $224.94 million. The global independent chemical company had its IPO in October 2010 and although up by nearly 218% since then, it is down by nearly 3.3% over the last 52 weeks.

LyondellBasell Industries NV (NYSE:LYB) had the second highest dividend yield of 3.29% in this list. The company increased its quarterly dividend payout by 16% in the second quarter of 2014 to $0.7.

We track hedge funds because their stock picks, especially their small-cap picks, managed to outperform the market on average. For instance, the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds outperformed the market by nearly 1 percentage point per month between 1999 and 2012. We have been sharing these stock picks in our newsletter and these stocks returned a cumulative of 135% since the end of August 2012. S&P 500 ETFs returned less than 55% during the same period (read the details here). Bottomline is that George Soros isn’t interested in these companies for their dividend yield. He invests in them because of their capital appreciation potential, though he doesn’t mind getting paid while waiting for capital appreciation.

Disclosure: none