A dividend champion is a company which has a 25 year record of annual dividend increases. There are only 137 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 138 companies on the dividend champions list at the end of 2020.
There were five companies that ended up leaving the Dividend Champions list in 2021. These companies left for various reasons. The companies that left include:
- Eaton Vance Corp. (EV) - Acquired
- AT&T Inc. (T) - Kept dividends unchanged in 2021
- United Bankshares Inc. (UBSI) - Kept dividends unchanged in 2021
- Weyco Group Inc. (WEYS) - Kept dividends unchanged in 2021
- Raytheon Technologies (RTX) - spin-offs reduced total dividend income in 2020. Should've removed in 2020
The number in brackets is the number of year of consecutive annual dividend increases for each of these five companies.
There were four companies added to the list in 2021. These companies achieved dividend champion status by raising dividends to shareholders for 25 years in a row. The companies include:
- Cardinal Health, Inc. (CAH)
- Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (CHD)
- Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. (EXPD)
- The York Water Company (YORW)
All of this brings the list of dividend champions to 137 companies by the end of 2021. You can download the list from here.
