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- Three Dividend Raises Worth Your Attention This Week Plus Four Painful Cuts
Three Dividend Raises Worth Your Attention This Week Plus Four Painful Cuts
A 7% nursing landlord, a battered staples aristocrat and a mid-cap chemicals name all just raised.
Four names lifted their payouts this week, and one of them still yields north of 7% after the hike.
On the other side of the ledger, a pizza chain and a mortgage lender both went to zero, and a Canadian telecom slashed its dividend by more than half. Here is where the setups look most interesting.

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Infrastructure
A $1.5 Billion MarineMax Move Could Supercharge Blackstone's Waterfront Business

Blackstone's (NYSE: BX) infrastructure arm is nearing a roughly $1.5 billion deal to acquire MarineMax through Safe Harbor Marinas, expanding a waterfront business that Blackstone already turned into a major global platform.
MarineMax operates 65 marinas and storage locations alongside roughly 70 dealerships. Safe Harbor, which Blackstone acquired for about $5.7 billion last year, is already the world's largest marina owner and operator.
Bringing the two together would dramatically widen Blackstone's reach across boating, storage, services, and high-value waterfront locations.
From Marinas to a Full Boating Ecosystem
Safe Harbor gives Blackstone recurring revenue from essential marina services. MarineMax would add dealerships and a much broader customer relationship around buying, storing, maintaining, and using boats.
Follow a boat owner through that cycle, and you find why the combination matters. Blackstone can potentially capture more of the spending surrounding the same customer instead of owning only the dock.
Blackstone Builds Another Platform, Not Just Another Deal
The strategy mirrors Blackstone's broader playbook of buying large physical platforms and expanding them through additional acquisitions. MarineMax would give Safe Harbor considerably more scale and another route into affluent recreational spending.
If the transaction is finalized, you would have Blackstone turning a marina investment into a much broader leisure infrastructure business.
The $1.5 billion move would deepen its control over an entire customer ecosystem rather than adding another isolated asset.
BX currently trades at $145 and pays a dividend of $4.74 per share, a yield of 3.25%.

Oil & Gas
ConocoPhillips Is Turning Willow Into a Decade-Defining Oil Project

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) is moving deeper into its $9 billion Willow development in Alaska. This project has become central to the company’s plan for stronger cash generation through the end of the decade.
Willow is expected to begin producing oil in 2029 and could recover roughly 600 million barrels over its operating life.
Alaska Becomes the Growth Anchor
ConocoPhillips already operates a substantial Alaska business, but Willow gives the company a new production center capable of running for decades. Existing infrastructure and regional experience also give ConocoPhillips a base from which to develop the project.
Trace the company’s growth plan toward 2029, and you keep arriving back at Willow. Few individual projects carry this much weight inside the future portfolio.
One Project Reshapes the Production Map
Willow expands ConocoPhillips’ U.S. resource base at a time when long-life energy assets remain difficult and expensive to develop. Once operating, the project adds another major source of production alongside the company’s existing businesses.
The Next Growth Phase Gets Physical
ConocoPhillips has targeted roughly $7 billion in additional annual free cash flow by 2029, with Willow expected to contribute heavily toward that goal. The project turns those longer-term targets into something tangible: wells, infrastructure, production, and barrels.
By the time Willow starts producing, you could be looking at a materially different ConocoPhillips. The company is building one of its next major growth engines now, years before the first barrel reaches the market.
COP currently trades at $125 and pays a dividend of $3.36 per share, a yield of 2.67%.

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Corporate
Nvidia Just Put Wall Street Behind a $500 Billion Expansion Plan

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is partnering with six major financial institutions on financing platforms designed to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital for infrastructure tied to the company’s growing ecosystem.
The scale makes this much bigger than another financing arrangement.
Nvidia is trying to make sure customers and infrastructure partners have access to the capital required to keep building, rather than allowing funding constraints to slow the expansion of the market around its business.
Wall Street Becomes Part of the Growth Machine
Bringing major financial institutions into the equation gives Nvidia another lever beyond product development. Banks and institutional capital can fund projects at a scale that individual customers may struggle to support alone.
Keep your eye on the financing layer: every new pool of outside capital can help Nvidia’s customers build sooner and on a larger scale, widening the market around Nvidia without forcing the company to fund those projects itself.
Demand Gets a Longer Runway
The initiative gives Nvidia a way to attack one of the biggest constraints on future growth: the enormous cost of building enough infrastructure to support continued demand.
If hundreds of billions in outside capital become available, you no longer have Nvidia simply waiting for customers to find the money.
The company is helping build the financial system that allows those customers to keep expanding, giving Nvidia a much stronger hand in shaping how large its future market can become.
NVDA currently trades at $218 and pays a dividend of $1.00 per share, a yield of 0.46%.

Dividend Stocks Worth Watching
Omega Healthcare Investors (NYSE: OHI) raised its quarterly dividend to $0.68 per share, a penny higher than the prior quarter, payable August 14 to holders of record as of August 3.
Omega is the biggest pure-play skilled nursing landlord in the country, and management has been slowly climbing the payout back up as tenant coverage ratios recover.
The yield still sits above 7% at current prices, which is where the name earns its keep on income screens. If you want senior-housing exposure with an aggressive payout policy, this is the cleanest way to get it.
Just remember the underlying business is tied to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement cycles, so the equity can trade choppily around policy headlines.
The Clorox Company (NYSE: CLX) bumped its quarterly dividend to $1.25 from $1.24, payable August 28. Small move.
But Clorox is a dividend aristocrat with decades of consecutive annual increases, and the raise lands at a time when the stock has been under pressure from private-label competition and post-pandemic normalization.
If you want a staples name where the price has done most of its correcting and the payout keeps grinding higher, Clorox belongs on the list.
The yield sits in the mid-3% range, which is generous for the category, and the balance sheet is investment grade.
Ashland (NYSE: ASH) declared its quarterly cash dividend of $0.42 per share on August 7. Ashland is a specialty chemicals name most overlook, and the setup is interesting because the stock has been range-bound while the payout has kept moving.
If you want exposure to industrial demand recovery without paying up for the aristocrats, Ashland gives you a mid-cap alternative with a growing dividend and a management team that has been aggressive on portfolio simplification.
Not the flashiest name in the group. But the numbers support the story.

Dividend Increases
Dover Corporation (DOV) lifted its quarterly payout to $0.525 per share from $0.52, boosting your income.
Ryder System (R) hiked its quarterly dividend 11% to $1.01 per share.
Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI) raised its quarterly dividend by a penny to $0.68 per share.
Clorox (CLX) bumped its quarterly dividend to $1.25 per share from $1.24.
Dividend Decreases
Papa John's International (PZZA) suspended its quarterly dividend beginning with the third quarter of 2026, cutting off your payout.
UWM Holdings (UWMC) suspended its quarterly dividend after posting a $452 million net loss in Q2.
Community Healthcare Trust (CHCT) trimmed its dividend 31% to $0.33 per share.
TELUS (TU) reset its quarterly dividend to C$0.1875, a roughly 55% cut from C$0.4184.

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Poll: What dividend growth rate would you require to buy a stock yielding less than 2%? |
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Upcoming Dividend Payers
Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI) pays you $0.68 per share on August 14 if you're a holder of record as of August 3.
Clorox (CLX) pays $1.25 per share on August 28.
Microchip Technology (MCHP) pays $0.455 per share on September 9 to holders of record on August 24.
CDW Corporation (CDW) pays $0.630 per share on September 10 to holders of record on August 25.

Everything Else
These 7 dividend stocks are positioned for long-term gains while continuing to pay through crashes, recessions, and market chaos.
🚢 ADNOC Logistics & Services raised its 2026 profit outlook after quarterly profit quadrupled, while maintaining plans to grow its dividend per share by at least 5% annually over the medium term.
📡 Deutsche Telekom more than doubled its share buyback program after stronger-than-expected earnings reinforced confidence in its cash generation.
🛡️ Generali launched a €500 million buyback after first-half operating profit and adjusted net income both beat expectations.
💰 Singapore Exchange capped record annual earnings with an extra dividend after stronger trading activity boosted revenue across equities, currencies and commodities.
🏦 DBS raised its full-year outlook and declared another dividend after record quarterly profit was fueled by wealth-management and trading growth.

That’s all for today’s edition of the Dividend Brief.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any feedback or dividend stocks you want me to take a look at, just reply to this email!
—Noah Zelvis
DividendBrief.com


