Consumer products companies have it easy. When you buy a box (or 4) of Kimberly-Clark (KMB) Kleenex, you and Kimberly-Clark both know you will be buying more soon. When you buy a Coca-Cola (KO) soda, you aren’t going to drink it forever…you’ll be back to buy more.

What if someone could apply this buy-dispose-repeat process to the medical supply industry? Certainly, that would be a very profitable company.

CR Bard (BCR) does just that.

In fact, 90% of the company’s products are single use products. You use them once, then toss them out.

The company sells catheters, stents, ports, drug-eluding balloons, and surgical repair products (among others). CR Bard’s products are the health industry’s answer to disposable consumer products.

CR Bard’s Business in Detail

CR Bard breaks its operations into 4 primary segments. The image below gives a rundown of each segment, along with the percentage of total sales each segment generated in fiscal 2014 for C.R. Bard.

BCR Segments

Source: page 12

CR Bard currently has a market cap of $13.5 billion; it has grown for a long time.CR Bard was founded in 1907 in New York City by Charles R Bard (who named the company after himself).

CR Bard Is An Unusual Dividend Aristocrat

CR Bard has increased its dividend payments for 44 consecutive years. The company’s long history of consecutive dividend increases makes CR Bard a Dividend Aristocrat.

The image below shows the company’s consistent dividend growth since the 1980’s.

BCR Dividend History

What makes CR Bard unusual for a Dividend Aristocrat is its exceptionally low dividend yield. The company’s stock currently offers investors a paltry dividend yield of 0.5%.

The reason the company’s dividend yield is so low is because it has a payout ratio of  just 10%. Will CR Bard hike its payout ratio soon? That seems very unlikely. In fact, the company’s payout ratio has gone in the opposite direction.

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