If the market's rumbles have you struggling to get a full night's sleep, you aren't alone -- nor are you helpless. In uncertain times, it can pay to invest in stocks that will be worth something to your portfolio even if they end up getting dragged down a bit by external economic phenomena.
In that vein, I'll be discussing two companies that have a stable base of revenue that they can count on to stick around no matter what's going on in the world or their industry. Furthermore, both companies pay a decent dividend.
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1. GlaxoSmithKline
With a gargantuan market cap in excess of $104 billion, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK -0.92%) is one of the world's biggest pharma players. Thanks to its massive portfolio of drugs, ranging from amoxicillin to antidepressants, it brought in about $46 billion in 2021.
That caps off a five-year period that saw its quarterly revenue rise by 40% and its quarterly free cash flow (FCF) climb by 378%. And investors should take note that both of those metrics point to the company's long-term health.
Importantly, there's more growth to come quite soon. GSK has five different medicines in the registration phase, meaning that if regulators assent, there's the potential for five new product launches in the short term. Of course, the company also has a galaxy of late-stage programs in the pipeline that might also advance over the next few years, so it won't likely be short on growth catalysts.
In terms of its revenue-making potential for shareholders, GSK's forward dividend is $2.92, which puts its yield at just over 5%. That's quite a bit more than the market's average of 1.2%. To get roughly $1,000 in annual income from holding the stock, you'd need to invest around $20,000.
One thing you should be aware of is that the company's dividend doesn't come with any guarantee of increasing over time. In fact, GSK's payout has only risen by 13.3% in the last decade, so your assumption should be that it largely stays the same.
2. Innovative Industrial Properties
Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR 0.06%) is a real estate investment trust (REIT) that specializes in renting cultivation space to cannabis businesses. It's also one of my highest-conviction stock picks.
To buy the space that it leases out, IIPR looks for marijuana companies that are cash poor but real estate rich. Then, it buys the property from the companies for cash, at which point it leases out the space to the prior owner. The result is that it gets to build a cannabis real estate empire and a steady stream of rental income at the same time, which is quite an attractive proposition to say the least.
In 2021, it grew its revenue as well as net income by about 75%. And 2021's revenue totaled $204.6 million, the company's largest sum to date. To seed the fields for future growth, it spent $714 million during the year, buying 37 new properties, bringing its total number of holdings to 103.
Critically, IIPR's existing tenants have an average weighted lease length of 16.7 years. In other words, its base of revenue is locked in, so each additional acquisition will yield revenue for quite some time. Therefore, the company has plenty of income with which to pay a hearty dividend.
IIPR's dividend yield rests at 3.3% right now, but there's reason to believe that it'll keep growing over time. In the past three years alone, its payout rose by 233%, and management contends that more hikes are slated to come.
So if you drop the $30,310 needed to make just over $1,000 per year from your shares, you might well find that you end up making more as time goes by, which is icing on the cake.
