Nov '25 dividend portfolio update: reassuring trends vs turnarounds

Recognising what state a company is in can be a useful way to help minimise losses and timing errors:

• Is the business in a stable, positive trend, delivering reliable growth each year?
• Is it midway through transforming itself into a different kind of business?
• Is it stuck in a cyclical downturn (or at a cyclical peak), where management and shareholders are largely just along for the ride?

Understanding these factors can provide a more informed context for valuation metrics and fundamental analysis.

Needless to say, this is an area where I've often gone astray, failing to reading the runes correctly until after I've invested.

Turning to this month's results from my portfolio, I'm fairly confident the five companies covered in this review variously fit into all three of the categories above.

By size and index they include three FTSE 100 firms, an AIM small cap and a specialist financial stock. While one or two are facing challenges, I am I am hopeful that one or two of the might even become candidates for a top up.

Screen update & top-up plans: some additional share purchases are certainly needed. My personal policy is generally to be (almost) fully invested, most of the time. But the model portfolio's cash weighting has now topped 10%, even before adding Q4 dividend income.

I plan to rectify this with some share purchases in my usual end-of-quarter window in December. Subscribers will receive full details before Christmas.

However, before I finalise these choices I've been working on an update to my screening system to incorporate some simple momentum factors. As discussed in my Q3 2025 review, I'd like to think it's possible to improve the timing of my entry points so that I'm less likely to buy into a downwards trend – a classic value investing error.

I'll share more on this in the coming weeks. But first, here's a review of this month's company results.

As a quick reminder, my model dividend portfolio broadly mirrors the shares in my main personal portfolio, although position sizing and cost will vary for practical reasons.

Please note that my comments reflect my personal views and are not investment advice or recommendations. Please do your own research and seek professional advice if needed. Full disclaimer here.

In this month's report

Here is a list of the topics covered in this month's report, together with a short summary of the longer sections below.

Please scroll down for the full report, or click on the links to go directly to a specific section.