I am planning on dividends investing; what companies (SG) are recommended?

I would look at the sponsor if its for REITs, high dividend yield can be a cause by a rise in price rather than an increase in DPU.

For non REITs, I would look at those that have recurring incomes and diversified portfolio like Capitaland/ST Engineering. Good luck!

Hi Shariff

I like Yang Teng's answer. One tip from me, I personally find the dividend yield calculation from business times weekend (saturday) quite good, the yield calculation is more accurate than the one you see on sgx stockfacts and other public info. Eg after the Funan Mall re-opening, CMT paid 3cents per share for q4 dividends... Applying this to all 4 quarters, they should be giving 12 cents per year / share price of 2.43... Its 4.9% yield +/-, but stockfacts will apply the old q1-q3 dpu and show CMT at about 3.8% yield. If you might want to skim on some homework, use the yield from the weekend BT rather than SGX stockfacts.

But yield is a small part of the equation.
The dividend payout and cashflow has to be sustaining.

I personally take the Goverance Transparency Index (GTI) score on sgx stockfacts more important than most other factors, if the score is below 70, I generally ignore the stock / reit because it shows that the company cares less about corporate governance and how they look like to the world. Crudely saying, its very much like someone wearing tshirt, berms and slippers to a formal job interview. If they are not taking themselves seriously, why should you?

A second factor I have started noticing is the ROE figure loaded on Stockfacts sgx screener. I am still learning, but the not so good investments I have divested / sold tend to do below 6%... One reason for low ROE is poor results, overuse of debt, issuing too many shares, or not good enough capital management. I don't have a right number to advise, but I am selectively filtering out those that do ROE better than 7%. It should be higher, so my new investments for 2020 are more likely to go towards those that deliver more than 10% ROE, on top of all my other criteria.

Hope these few points help you.

Ps: by the way all those 9+ / 10+% dividend yield stocks / reits, they are a sign to ignore. The yield is high because the price is low, and not many want to buy them (probably more fundamental issues with the business). Its usually one of the first red flags to run away from. For dividend investors, we look at long run consistency and performance, no point dipping your fingers in those.

Personally after applying all my criteria, generally I filter down sgx stocks down to like the "top 20", I spend my time more on in depth for the top 20, filter again to top 5, then pick a few for my rsp.