A dividend champion is a company which has a 25 year record of annual dividend increases. There are only 139 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 137 companies on the dividend champions list at the end of 2021.
There were three companies that ended up leaving the Dividend Champions list in 2022. These companies left for various reasons. The companies that left include:
- Computer Services (CSVI) - the company was acquired
- Mercury General Corp (MCY) - the company cut dividends
- People's United Financial (PBCT) - the company was acquired
The number in brackets is the number of year of consecutive annual dividend increases for each of these five companies.
There were five companies added to the list in 2022. These companies achieved dividend champion status by raising dividends to shareholders for 25 years in a row. The companies include:
- C.H. Robinson Worldwide (CHRW)
- Canadian National Railway (CNI)
- Bank OZK (OZK)
- J.M. Smucker (SJM)
- United Bankshares (UBSI)
All of this brings the list of dividend champions to 139 companies by the end of 2021. You can download the list from here.
