The Dividend Family Guy

Windstream (WIN) is spinning off a REIT that will encompass most of its fiber/copper and real estate assets.  The goal of this appears to be a fancy way of ridding itself of debt.  The new company is called Communications Sales and Leasing, Inc. (CSAL).  As a stockholder will this be in my favor?  Let's take a look. For every 5 shares of WIN I will receive 1 share of CSAL.  For example if I owned 1000 shares of WIN, after the spinoff completes I will own 1000 shares of WIN plus 200 shares of CSAL.  The dividends will change from an annual $1/share for WIN all the way down to $.10.  The CSAL dividend is expected to be $2.40 per share annually. WIN does mention it will sell its stake in CSAL to reduce debt. I was confused by the next snippet in the letter to shareholders.  If you can explain it to me I would appreciate it.   The quote is "After giving effect to the interest in CS&L retained by Windstream, each shareholde...

I had 2 announcements come my way last week for stocks in my taxed portfolio. The first was from AGNC - American capital Agency Corp announcing the quarterly dividend will be remaining at $.65/share. The second was by Windstream Holdings. They also maintained their dividend of $.25/share. AGNC is a real estate investment trust investing primarily in agency mortgage-backed securities. Because it is a REIT it is paying a high yield of 11.77%. It has been maintaining this since the cut in September of 2013. It has only been cutting the dividend so I do not see good things in the future. I bought this in my early days of investing and was only chasing yield at the time. Needless to say it has grown at all for me and the stock price has remained the same. I only have a few shares so I will reevaluate this if the dividend ever gets cut. Windstream Holdings (WIN) is my largest position in my taxed portfolio. It's current yield (8.9%)is a little bit lower than AGNC but still pretty hi...