Week #4NEE

Stock of the Week #4 — NextEra Energy (NEE)

July 6, 2026

Five-box test: ✓ Pays · ✓ Raises · ✓ Safe · ✓ Undervalued · ✓ Yield that matters

Week four, another $100, and this time we're plugging into the grid.

So far we've bought a rural-goods retailer (Tractor Supply), a medical-device maker (Medtronic), and a monthly-paying landlord (Realty Income). This week we add a fourth kind of business: an electric utility. NextEra Energy (NEE) is the largest electric utility in the United States. It runs Florida Power & Light, which keeps the lights on for millions of Florida homes under steady, regulated rates, and it's also the world's biggest generator of wind and solar power. That combination is the whole story here.

Why NextEra

Most utilities are bought for one thing: a safe, boring, slow-growing dividend. NextEra is the rare one you buy for safety and growth. The regulated Florida utility provides the dependable, recession-proof cash that lets a company raise its dividend through any economy. The clean-energy arm provides the growth engine, building the wind, solar, and storage projects that expand earnings year after year. That's why NextEra has raised its dividend for 31 straight years while growing it far faster than a typical utility ever could.

It's also a fourth distinct economic engine under the portfolio. Tractor Supply moves with rural spending, Medtronic with healthcare, Realty Income with commercial real estate, and NextEra with electricity demand and energy policy. Four businesses that rise and fall for four different reasons is exactly how a family portfolio gets sturdier.

The five boxes

Unlike Realty Income, there's no accounting asterisk here. NextEra is a regular company, not a REIT or a pipeline partnership, so we score it on plain earnings, the way you'd expect.

• Pays — yes, 44 consecutive years without a cut, straight through 2008, 2020, and the 2022 rate shock.
• Raises — 31 straight years of increases.
• Safe — about 63% of earnings paid out. A comfortable, well-covered level for a regulated utility with predictable revenue.
• Undervalued — today's yield sits roughly 11% above its own 5-year average, so it's a bit cheaper than its usual price.
• Yield that matters — about 2.9%. The smallest yield of anything we own, and the one honest knock on this pick.

Five boxes, five checks, for a DividendAbundance Score of 80 — Strong.

The honest part

Two things to say plainly.

First, the yield. At about 2.9%, NextEra pays the least of our four holdings (Realty Income yields nearly double that). We're accepting a smaller starting income for a reason: growth. NextEra has grown its dividend around 10% a year recently, roughly double what most of our other names manage, and management has laid out a plan to keep raising it. A smaller dividend that climbs fast can overtake a bigger one that barely moves, and over the decades this portfolio is built to run, that compounding is the whole point.

Second, that fast growth is set to cool. Management has guided that dividend increases will step down to about 6% a year after 2026, as the company shifts to a more measured pace. That's still the fastest grower we own, but we'd rather plan on the honest 6% than the flattering 10%, so that's the number we use in our income projections. If they beat it, that's upside we didn't count on.

We're buy-and-hold-forever investors, and a 31-year raiser that combines regulated-utility safety with genuine growth is exactly the kind of steady-but-not-stagnant anchor we want under the portfolio.

The numbers on this week's $100

• Invested: $100.00
• Bought: 1.1465 shares at $87.22
• New annual dividend income added: about $2.86 per year
• Every dividend it pays gets reinvested right back into the portfolio, so the income keeps building between our weekly buys.

Four weeks in, four very different businesses, one income stream that now grows a little every month. The running totals are on the portfolio page, and the home-page slider lets you drag through time, and toggle to monthly, to watch it compound.

That's week four. We bought NEE, we're holding it, and we'll see you next week with pick number five.

This is not financial advice. We're individual investors sharing our own approach and the reasoning behind our own real decisions, not licensed advisors. We own, or are buying, the stocks we write about in this series. Do your own research and consider speaking with a financial professional before investing. Dividend figures, yields, share counts, and prices are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of the publish date and will change over time.