Thursday, July 28, 2011

8 High-Yielding Dividend Aristocrats Not Afraid to Raise Their Dividends

The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats is the most recognized list of dividend stocks. The Dividend Aristocrats index is designed to measure the performance of S&P 500 constituents that have followed a policy of consistently increasing dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years.

Dividend Aristocrats exhibit the following characteristics:

- They are a member of the S&P 500
- The index is equally weighted with constituents re-weighted quarterly
- List is reviewed and updated annually in December

Make no mistake, Dividend Aristocrats are the blue-blood of dividend growth stocks. When building your core portfolio, this list is where you want to start your evaluation. If you want dividend growth, these stocks have been there, and done that - for decades.

This week week, I screened my dividend growth stocks database for Dividend Aristocrats with a yield greater than 3% and have increased their dividends for at least 35 consecutive years. The results are presented below:

Procter & Gamble (PG)
Yield: 3.1% | Years of Dividend Growth: 54
The Procter & Gamble Company is a leading consumer products company that markets household and personal care products in more than 180 countries.

Pepsico, Inc. (PEP)
Yield: 3.1% | Years of Dividend Growth: 39
PepsiCo, Inc. is a major international producer of branded beverage and snack food products.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
Yield: 3.2% | Years of Dividend Growth: 49
Johnson & Johnson is a leader in the pharmaceutical, medical device and consumer products industries.

Abbott Laboratories (ABT)
Yield: 3.6% | Years of Dividend Growth: 39
Abbott Laboratories is a diversified life science company and is a leading maker of drugs, nutritional products, diabetes monitoring devices, and diagnostics.

Kimberly-Clark Co. (KMB)
Yield: 4.1% | Years of Dividend Growth: 39
Kimberly Clark Corp. is a global consumer products company that produces tissue, personal care and health care. Its brands include Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex, Depend, Kleenex, Scott and Kimberly-Clark.

Consolidated Edison, Inc. (ED)
Yield: 4.5% | Years of Dividend Growth: 38
Consolidated Edison, Inc. is an electric and gas utility holding company that serves parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Leggett & Platt, Inc. (LEG)
Yield: 4.6% | Years of Dividend Growth: 39
Leggett & Platt Inc makes a broad line of bedding and furniture components and other home, office and commercial furnishings, as well as diversified products for non-furnishings markets.

Cincinnati Financial Corp. (CINF)
Yield: 5.6% | Years of Dividend Growth: 51
Cincinnati Financial Corp. markets primarily property and casualty coverage. It also conducts life insurance and asset management operations.

As with past screens, the data presented above is in its raw form. Some of the the companies would be disqualified for poor dividend fundamentals. However some of the others may be worth additional due diligence.

My database, D4L-Data, is an Open Office spreadsheet containing more than 20 columns of information on the 210+ companies that I track. The data is sortable and has built-in buttons and macros to make it easy to use. Companies included in the list are those that have had a history of dividend growth. The D4L-Data spreadsheet is a part of D4L-Premium Services and is updated each Saturday for subscribers.

Full Disclosure: Long PG, PEP, JNJ, ABT, KMB, ED, LEG, CINF. See a list of all my dividend growth holdings here.

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(Photo Credit)
Tags: [PG] [PEP] [JNJ] [ABT] [KMB] [ED] [LEG] [CINF]