13 Dividend Growth Stocks With A Strong Buy Rating

Companies that have raised their dividend payments for at least 10 consecutive years are known as dividend achievers. It's an exclusive club containing just 335 companies.

It's always hard to find the good stocks from the bad performer. I personal approach is based on fundamentals. If a stock looks cheap, it offers values, than it might be buy. But sometimes they are cheap for a simple reason. They have longer enduring operational problems or face a hard headwind for the future.

It could also make sense to look what analysts recommend or discover the trade statistics of big guru's like Warren Buffett or George Soros.

Today I like to focus on the highest recommended stocks from the dividend achievers list. Those stocks are highlights and were rewarded by analysts with the highest buy recommendation, a strong buy.

Only 13 of 335 companies received such a high rating. Attached you can find a full list of the results.

These are the results....

11 Dividend Achievers With Strong Buy Rating

Are you looking for stocks that are worth to buy? Sure, we all do! Today I like to show you some of the stocks with the highest buy rating within the Dividend Growth space.

I've compiled all Dividend Achievers, stocks that have raised dividends over a period of at least 10 years without a break, and selected them by the highest analyst rating.

Currently, 167 companies (nearly half of the results) have a buy or better rating. Finally, eleven stocks got a strong buy rating. These are my 4 favorite results:

Ex-Dividend Stocks: Best Dividend Paying Shares On March 20, 2013

The best yielding and biggest ex-dividend stocks researched by ”long-term-investments.blogspot.com”. Dividend Investors should have a quiet overview of stocks with upcoming ex dividend dates.

The ex dividend date is the final date on which the new stock buyer couldn’t receive the next dividend. If you like to receive the dividend, you need to buy the stock before the ex dividend date. I made a little screen of the best yielding stocks with a higher capitalization that have their ex date on the next trading day.

A full list of all stocks with payment dates can be found here: Ex-Dividend Stocks March 20, 2013. In total, 17 stocks and preferred shares go ex dividend - of which 8 yield more than 3 percent. The average yield amounts to 3.24%.

Company	Ticker	Mcap	P/E	P/B	P/S	Yield
PennantPark Investment Corporation	PNNT	435.00M	9.24	1.16	3.64	9.33%
PennantPark Floating Rate Capital Ltd.	PFLT	-	-	-	-	7.28%
HSBC Holdings plc	HBC	201.19B	14.75	1.15	3.55	6.62%
Aviva plc	AV	4.45B	20.72	0.68	0.84	6.47%
SmartPros Ltd.	SPRO	7.11M	-	0.65	0.44	3.97%
LS Starrett Co.	SCX	64.90M	-	0.57	0.26	3.73%
Nicholas Financial Inc.	NICK	159.75M	7.57	1.29	2.28	3.64%
EarthLink Inc.	ELNK	567.81M	78.71	0.79	0.42	3.63%
Intercontinental Hotels Group	IHG	8.09B	15.79	26.46	4.41	2.85%
JMP Group Inc.	JMP	147.96M	54.58	1.17	1.03	2.14%
Hawkins Inc.	HWKN	414.06M	25.46	2.44	1.20	1.73%
Convergys Corporation	CVG	1.80B	67.96	1.35	0.90	1.41%
Mentor Graphics Corp.	MENT	1.95B	14.58	2.01	1.81	1.04%
Computer Task Group Inc.	CTGX	425.33M	26.05	4.14	1.02	0.88%
Financial Engines, Inc.	FNGN	1.67B	94.14	6.34	9.01	0.57%
World Fuel Services Corp.	INT	2.84B	14.88	1.87	0.07	0.38%
Advance Auto Parts Inc.	AAP	5.94B	15.46	4.89	0.96	0.30%

20 Dividend Challengers With Very Low Debt

Dividend Challengers With Low Debt To Equity Ratios Researched By Dividend Yield - Stock, Capital, Investment. Stocks with a history of rising dividends of more than 5 years but less than 9 years in a row are named Dividend Challengers. 189 companies with such a dividend growth performance are available at the markets. But past dividend growth does not guarantee a future dividend hike if earnings are down. A major ratio to judge the ability of paying dividends from capital assets is the debt to equity ratio.

I screened all Dividend Challengers by companies with very low debt to equity ratios (ratio below 0.1). Those stocks are nearly free of debt and have a generous cushion of future dividend hikes. Below the results are some of stocks with a very low market capitalization which are not to recommend in a deeper analysis. 20 stocks with a market capitalization of more than USD 300 million remained. Twelve of them have a current buy or better rating.