A dividend champion is a company which has a 25 year record of annual dividend increases. There are only 146 such companies in the US today. I believe that becoming a dividend champion is no accident, and it is a result of a strong business that has generated earnings growth for a long period of time. These are the types of businesses I like to study, and potentially consider at the right time for my dividend portfolio. I believe that the dividend champions list offers a more complete picture than the dividend aristocrats.
The creator of the Dividend Champions list was David Fish, who unfortunately died in 2018. I decided to do annual updates based on his work.This year, I decided to keep it simple, and kept the data per each company to a minimum.
As a starting point, there were 145 companies on the dividend champions list at the end of 2023.
There were six companies that ended up leaving the Dividend Champions list in 2024. These companies left for various reasons. The companies that left include:
- Cambridge Bancorp (CATC) was acquired
- First of Long Island Corp (FLIC) failed to raise dividends in 2024
- The following four companies cut dividends in 2024 - Leggett & Platt (LEG), 3M Company (MMM), Telephone & Data Sys (TDS), Walgreen Boots Alliance (WBA)
There were seven companies added to the list in 2024. These companies achieved dividend champion status by raising dividends to shareholders for 25 years in a row. The companies include:
Bank of Utica BKUTK
Eagle Bancorp Montana EBMT
Eversource Energy ES
Fastenal Company FAST
FactSet Research Systems FDS
First Farmers Financial Corp. FFMR
Graco Inc. GGG
All of this brings the list of dividend champions to 146 companies by the end of 2024. You can download the list from here.
