The Income Machine Report #1: 30 Stocks, 15 Earnings Dates, and the 5 Questions That Matter.
JPMorgan raised 10%. TSMC grew profits 77%. Now the rest of your Universe steps up to report. Here’s the full calendar and what I’m watching.
The Dispatch is becoming the Income Machine Report. Same universe, same plain-English rundown, now numbered weekly, with the full scorecard living right here in the post.
Fifteen of your thirty companies have already reported.
JPMorgan raised its dividend 10 percent and stapled a $50 billion buyback to it. Taiwan Semiconductor grew net income 77 percent and started paying its dividend in US dollars. Casey’s raised its payout for the 27th straight year.
The machine did not miss a payment.
Now comes the crowded part. Fifteen more report between Monday and August 5. Four of them land on a single Wednesday.
This issue is your map for all of it.
What earnings season means for an income machine
Wall Street treats earnings season like a scoreboard. Beat the EPS estimate by two cents, the stock pops. Miss by two cents, it drops.
We run a different scoreboard.
A dividend investor watches earnings season for one thing: evidence about the safety and growth of the payment. A company can miss the Street’s EPS number and strengthen its dividend in the same quarter. Domino’s just did exactly that, and we will get to it below the wall.
So before the parade of reports starts, here are the five questions I ask of every single release. Steal them.
1. Did free cash flow cover the dividend with room to spare?
Dividends are paid in cash. Earnings are an accounting opinion. When a company generates $10 billion in free cash flow and pays $3 billion in dividends, the payment survives almost any bad year.
2. What did guidance do?
The reported quarter is history. Guidance tells you what the board will be looking at when it sets the next raise. A raised outlook in July usually shows up as a bigger dividend increase six months later.
3. Where is the payout ratio headed?
A 45 percent payout ratio that is drifting toward 55 percent tells a different story than a 45 percent ratio holding steady. Direction beats level.
4. Are margins holding?
Margins are the early warning system. Payout trouble almost always shows up in gross and operating margins four to six quarters before it shows up in the dividend announcement.
5. Is capex crowding the payment?
Heavy investment years are fine when cash flow is growing into them. Watch the companies that raise capex guidance while free cash flow flattens. That squeeze has a way of landing on the dividend last, but landing all the same.
Every note in this issue, and every issue that follows, is built on those five questions.
The first big report: Taiwan Semiconductor
TSM reported second quarter results on July 16, and it gave us a clean demonstration of how to grade a report with the five questions.
The headline numbers were loud:
Revenue: $40.2B, up 33.7% year over year in dollars
Net income: roughly $22.3B, up 77.4%
Gross margin: 67.7%, operating margin 60.3%
Q3 revenue guidance: $44.6B to $45.8B
Loud numbers are nice. Here is what actually mattered for the income machine.
First, the company raised full-year capex guidance to $60 to $64 billion, up from $52 to $56 billion, and committed another $100 billion to its Arizona buildout. That is question five flashing yellow. Management also told us the 2nm ramp will shave 3 to 4 points off gross margin in the second half.
The stock fell 3 percent on that margin warning before recovering.
Here is what the sellers skipped.
The board is targeting at least NT$24 per share for the full 2026 dividend, and starting this year, foreign holders get paid in US dollars. No more currency conversion drag on your payment. For a company growing profit 77 percent while running a margin near 68 percent, a 3-point margin haircut to fund the next decade of capacity is a trade I will take every time.
Verdict: dividend safe, growth intact, capex worth watching in 2027. TSM sits well above its $374 Buy Below, so we watch and wait.
That is the treatment every one of your 30 names gets below.
In this issue
The full 30-name earnings calendar, every date confirmed against company announcements
Report cards on every name already on the board, including the one that missed the Street and strengthened its dividend anyway
Four names with real open questions this season. One is a utility carrying an AT RISK safety score into its report.
The scorecard: all 30 names, tiers, yields, and safety scores in one table
The tripwire list we will grade Accenture against this fall
Three dates for your calendar
You just read the free half: the five questions and one full report card. Members get the other 29.
The member side of every issue: the full Universe rundown, the complete scorecard with safety scores, the Buy Below watch, and the dates that matter next.
Membership is $369 a year or $35 a month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Want to see the depth first? Here’s a full specimen deep dive, free: Johnson & Johnson: A Dividend Machine
