37 Dividend Champions and Contenders For Further Research

My idea generation process consists of several different steps. As I have tried to streamline my process, I do a lot more work around initial screening, and then follow up reviews in order to come up with companies for potential investment.

In general, it helps to have a known population of companies that fit some initial criterion. That is the first step in the process however. The next step involves applying criteria related to profitability, growth, valuation and quality, in order to narrow down that population to a more manageable list for further evaluation.

Last but not least, one needs to review the companies in the output, in order to determine whether past performance is likely to continue in the future.

A few months ago, I looked at the list of dividend aristocrats, in an effort to identify the dividend aristocrats I want to own at the right price. I have been slowly adding to those companies. That was a good example of a type of streamlined process that may take a few hours to set up, but could potentially help identify quality companies to consider every month. That monthly investment is not taking as much time either.

Today, I am going to look at it from another perspective. Notably, I will look at a larger population set available, which is the list of dividend champions and dividend contenders. I excluded financials.

Dividend Champions are companies that have managed to increase dividends for at least 25 years in a row.

Dividend Contenders are companies which have managed to increase dividends for at least 10 years in a row.

I looked at the list of those companies as of April 30, 2024, and applied the following criteria:

1. A consecutive streak of at least 10 years of annual dividend increases

2. Annualized dividend growth of at least 6%/year over the past 1/3/5/10 years

3. Most recent dividend increase of at least 6%

4. Dividend Yield exceeding 2%

5. Earnings per share growing over the past decade

I ran this screen, and came up with 37 companies for further research.