24 Dividend Champions for Further Research

The list of dividend champions is the most complete list of US dividend stocks that have managed to boost dividends for 25 years in a row. David Fish painstakingly maintains this list, and spends many hours each month on this very useful tool for dividend growth investors. As a side bonus, his list also includes dividend contenders (those which have increased dividends for 10 to 24 years) and dividend challengers ( those which have increased dividends for 5 to 9 years in a row).

I applied the following entry criteria on the list of dividend champions:

1) Dividend yield higher than 2%
2) 1,3, 5 and 10 year dividend growth of at least 5%/year
3) Dividend payout ratio of less than 60%
4) Dividends Increasing for at least 25 years in a row ( dividend champions)

I then went ahead, and reviewed the growth in earnings over the past decade. I wanted to eliminate companies which were not able to boost profitability over the past decade. Without growing profits, a company’s ability to boost distributions is severely limited.


Here is the list of 24 dividend champions for further research. Under the column for "company name", I have provided links to the most recent analysis of companies I have analyzed before.

Company Name	Ticker Symbol	Industry	No. 'Yrs	Dividend Payout Ratio	1-yr DG	3-yr DG	5-yr DG	10-yr DG
3M Company	(MMM)	Conglomerate	58	58.50	19.9	20.2	14.3	9.3
AFLAC Inc.	(AFL)	Insurance	33	28.03	6.8	5.6	6.7	13.6
Air Products & Chem.	(APD)	Chemical-Specialty	33	53.55	6.0	8.6	10.8	9.9
American States Water	(AWR)	Utility-Water	61	55.65	5.3	11.2	10.9	6.9
Colgate-Palmolive Co.	(CL)	Personal Products	52	55.30	5.6	7.1	8.1	10.5
Donaldson Company	(DCI)	Industrial Equipment	29	49.28	5.5	24.2	22.0	16.9
Dover Corp.	(DOV)	Machinery	60	44.68	5.8	13.9	12.9	11.5
Eaton Vance Corp.	(EV)	Financial Services	35	48.18	11.5	9.2	9.0	11.6
Emerson Electric	(EMR)	Industrial Equipment	59	50.67	7.1	5.4	6.9	8.4
Franklin Resources	(BEN)	Financial Services	36	23.00	25.0	17.8	15.4	16.2
Genuine Parts Co.	(GPC)	Auto Parts	60	56.80	5.2	7.7	8.2	6.9
Illinois Tool Works	(ITW)	Machinery	41	42.88	14.9	11.2	9.6	13.1
Johnson & Johnson	(JNJ)	Drugs/Consumer Prod.	53	54.74	6.9	7.1	6.9	8.8
Kimberly-Clark Corp.	(KMB)	Personal Products	44	60.20	6.9	7.5	7.1	7.6
Parker-Hannifin Corp.	(PH)	Industrial Equipment	59	41.72	21.7	15.9	18.7	16.0
Pentair Ltd.	(PNR)	Industrial Equipment	40	50.19	16.4	13.3	11.0	9.4
RPM International Inc.	(RPM)	Chemical-Specialty	42	59.14	7.7	6.6	5.0	5.6
Stanley Black & Decker	(SWK)	Tools/Security Products	48	37.04	4.9	5.9	9.8	6.5
T. Rowe Price Group	(TROW)	Financial Services	30	46.35	18.2	15.2	14.0	16.3
Target Corp.	(TGT)	Retail-Discount	48	42.42	13.7	17.8	20.8	19.6
Tompkins Financial Corp.	(TMP)	Banking	29	45.48	4.9	5.2	5.0	5.8
UGI Corp.	(UGI)	Utility-Electric/Gas	28	44.17	10.1	7.9	8.2	7.4
VF Corp.	(VFC)	Apparel	43	51.93	20.1	20.6	17.0	17.1
W.W. Grainger Inc.	(GWW)	Electronics-Wholesale	44	39.23	10.1	14.5	17.2	17.4

Just so I can be clear of however, this screening is just the first step in narrowing down the investable universe to a manageable list of stocks for further research. If I were starting out as a dividend growth investor, this is the first step I would be going through.

The next steps would involve familiarizing myself with each of the companies on the list, and evaluating trends in earnings, dividends, revenues. The last step would be to determine whether the current valuation makes sense at the moment, before putting my money to work.

Full Disclosure: Long MMM, AFL, APD, CL, EV, EMR, GPC, JNJ, KMB, TROW, TGT, VFC, GWW, ITW

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