October and November Update

This is somewhat late for October and close to November that I decided to include both months into one. In the future I'm considering posting quarterly updates rather than monthly, but I digress. Hopefully there are some non-Swedish readers who derive value from my writing here. Since I do not write as often here as I do on the Swedish version of my blog I try to summarize as much as possible and hopefully higher quality as well. Here is a chart with my portfolio development YTD (The numbers on the left are in SEK):

The financial markets have been in turmoil lately and my portfolio went down 15% only to rebound later on. ARCP did weight down heavily at the end of the month as well as Awilco Drilling. I'm not worried about my holdings, the importance of which was amplified during the month. I also learned that I need to keep a reserve of cash if good opportunities arise. I'm quite often to quick on the gun and bought way before bottom. The thing is, I did it more because I wanted to use capital than that the stocks were attractively valued so I will try to focus more on that in the future. Likewise I could have waited for more information from ARCP before increasing my position slightly. I'm currently looking forward to more ARCP news when they release their report for their third quarter.

Iron Mountain released their report in November. AFFO was 2 cents lower than estimates at 0.35$ which is still substantially higher than the regular dividend at 0.275, which gives a nice payout ratio of 78%. Income increased 4% y-o-y which is in line with management plans and the lower AFFO is mainly related to REIT related costs. Overall there wasn't much new. The share price has appreciated nicely and I intend to evaluate what I want to do with my holding at year-end. I imagine that the catalysts I've been waiting for will be done by then. I still expect an extra dividend to compensate for the lower dividend at the first two quarters of this year and a normal dividend before year-end. I'm also waiting to see if the price will appreciate more as funds and indices start to include IRM in their respective portfolios.

In November IRM announced their final dividends for the year as follows:
A catch up dividend of 0.255$ with an ex-dividend date the 25 November and payout on the 15th December, and a regular dividend of 0.475$ with an ex-dividend date at the third of December and payout on the 22nd of December. They also gave out the special dividend which for me meant 4 additional shares and 90$ in cash. The additional shares give me an extra 7.6$ in annual dividends.

Kinder Morgan also released their Q3 earnings. The dividend increased 7% y-o-y and 3% from the last quarter to a dividend of 0.44. They reported growth on all fronts which will support the aggressive dividend growth for the upcoming years which I'm looking forward to collecting. Unfortunately I did not have cash on hand to increase my position before the report but I shouldn't complain when they released such a good report. The merger also finalized which apparently was a trigger as the price appreciated somewhat.

Dividends YTD looks as follows and the projected anual dividend is at 1700$ (updated holdings can be found in the portfolio page on the menu):

For December I'm looking at BHP Billiton (BBL) and Main Street Capital Corporation (MAIN) which both seem like attractive option for 2015 at current prices.

How has the last quarter of the year been for you? See any attractive opportunities in the market?