Introduction
The fourth-quarter reporting season is now in full swing and I’m eagerly awaiting results to evaluate various companies’ performances and whether I should invest additional capital. One company at the top of my list is General Dynamics (GD), surprisingly a company that has not attracted more attention on here. After all, they have a strong dividend history and produce interesting products, such as the Abrams battle tank and in the future, the Columbia-class nuclear submarines. General Dynamics exhibits the four main characteristics that I believe are important when selecting long-term dividend investments, which I will outline in this article.
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One – Strong Financial Position
In my view, the most important characteristic that a company must exhibit is a strong financial position; after all, it does not matter to equityholders how good a product is if the company goes bankrupt. Therefore, I place a considerably greater value on companies that are in strong financial positions and have ample capacity to mitigate unexpected events. After reviewing General Dynamics’ financial statements that are contained in their 2017 Q3 10-Q report, I believe they meet this criterion.
