The first list of Dividend Aristocrats contained 26 companies and was published in 1989. Each year the list is updated. The list peaked at 64 companies in 2001, and contracted sharply during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The 2019 list consists of 57 companies with the following sector breakdown: Source: S&P Global There are two caveats I should mention on the Dividend Aristocrats. Even companies with a long track record of dividend increases can implode. General Electric (NYSE: GE) was on the list until 2010, and only came off after the share price had fallen more than 50% as a result of the financial crisis. Second, you might expect that companies that have raised their dividends for at least 25 consecutive years would have attractive dividends. You would be wrong for the most part. Most of the companies on the list have yields that are pretty low for dividend investors. Of the 57 companies on the current list, 43 yield less than 3%. The average yield for the entire list is 2.46%. But that's still a bit better than the S&P 500, which has seen its yield drop to 1.9%. Dividend Paying Standouts I won't reproduce the entire list here, but there are many familiar names: Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), and Pepsico (NSDQ: PEP), to name a few. Instead, I want to focus on the highest-yielding companies in list. There are six companies on the list that yield at least 4%. They are AT&T (NYSE: T), AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV), Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH), People's United Financial (NSDQ: PBCT), ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), and Chevron (NYSE: CVX). Cardinal Health's inclusion on the list is controversial, because some analysts argue that the firm has only increased its dividend for 23 years. CAH also is the worst performer on the entire list over the past year, with a total return of -23%. |
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