Pitney Bowes Company

The 4 Best Professional Services Dividends of the S&P 500

The other day I received a new pair of running shoes in the mail that I had ordered off of eBay ( EBAY ). I was surprised to find that they were packaged by Pitney Bowes ( PBI ) since I had only just learned what this company does in an article written by my colleague, found here . He insists that they are an excellent company for an "everyday investor." I don’t know what he means by this but I would generally encourage investors to follow the tenet of understanding what you are investing in.

To my surprise, Pitney Bowes also came up on top of a list of S&P 500 companies with the highest dividend yields in the commercial and professional services industry. Bloomberg releases this list at the end of every month and if utilized correctly it can be extremely helpful. What’s odd with this particular industry is that the companies listed are not necessarily competitors, as was the case with the telecom industry.

With that in mind, I will go over the top four on the list since after that there is a substantial drop below the infamous 3% yield mark. And again, any of these companies can be purchased without a fear of over allocation since they are not direct competitors, assuming you are not already over invested in any one of these sectors.

Pitney Bowes – Based out of Connecticut, Pitney Bowes focuses on improving their clients’ mail performance. They also work in business solutions and workflow management. It is important to note that they are not just mail, because they have been buying up companies left and right and that has enabled them to adapt to a more digital world. What you need to know is that this company has an extremely diverse catalog of products and services and this decreases risk through diversification, like a portfolio.

More importantly is that Pitney Bowes’ dividend has been increasing annually and is currently set at 6.49%. The industry average for commercial and professional services is 3.11% so this is more than double and is probably the only reason why that figure is over 3. They have not yet recovered from the recession and who’s to know if they even will. Businesses have obviously been cutting spending on non-essentials and with the rise of social media, direct mail is not as necessary any more. They have traded in the $20-$25 range since the beginning of 2009 and their earnings have not been great since, which explains the lack of price growth. The fact of the matter is that 6.5% is not a enough to warrant a purchase of a stock that may not grow, but the dividends have been rising and if the economy improves, Pitney Bowes may lag behind it.

Press Releases: Pitney Bowes Business Insight Announces Winners of ...

Bank J. Van Breda & Co is a Belgian bank with a specific focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises and liberal professionals. They used Pitney Bowes Business Insight’s DOC1® Designer, Generator+PCE, e-messaging technology and DCS solutions to improve the efficiency of the business processes that were previously paper driven, error-prone and time consuming. To go completely paperless, Bank J. Van Breda & Co uses Pitney Bowes Business Insight products to manage a new, Service based client application to directly handle all front office transactions and the remote signing of documents. With Pitney Bowes Business Insight, Bank J. Van Breda & Co’s experienced a radical change in the way employees worked and improved efficiency across the bank. Today, 70% of the documents generated by the new application are electronically signed and by the end of the summer, 90% of all commercial transactions will be supported by the new application. As a result, bank customers are able access and complete transactions faster and more accurately. US Bank, the fifth largest commercial bank in the U.S., has over 3,000 banking offices, over 5,300 ATMs in 25 states and provides several banking and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions. The company utilizes MapInfo Professional® and Portrait Uplift solutions in order to create list generation, model development and campaign management services to achieve their goal of producing organic household growth through campaigning their core products. By utilizing solutions from Pitney Bowes Business Insight, US Bank has greatly enhanced efficiencies for prospecting efforts and experienced a reduction in the number of vendors needed for data appends, freed up the internal modeling analysts and increased campaign profitability. Customers are receiving relevant communications for services that they are likely to purchase, which as increased their trust and loyalty to the bank. Melbourne-based information technology company, Axiom Business Systems has been in operation since 1983 and provides fully-integrated cemetery management solutions to clients across Australia and North America.

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