38 Dividend Growth Utilities With A Solid Finance Basis Or Earnings Growth

If there is one thing every investor can appreciate, it is a growing stream of reliable dividends. With the Federal Reserve aiming to raise rates in December, the rate sensitive stocks have seen some price declines.

One of those rate sensitive sectors is the utility sector. To help investors find some of the best companies in the sector, I began researching those utility stocks with at least 5 straight years of dividend increases. 54 companies are part of the results. That's a huge number which I want to reduce by implementing higher restrictions. More about this method can be read below.

Some investors like to build their dividend growth portfolio with very different strategies. One trick that I have found can help investors stay on track is to mentally consider the costs they will need to pay each month of their life and to set a goal for covering those costs with dividend income.

There is a beautiful irony in being able to cover the costs an investor faces in their life with a dividend check from the same company that is selling them a product. When it comes to the utility companies, it makes sense to have a more diversified portfolio rather than simply owning the utility that covers the investor's primary residence. 

The simple geographic risk of a natural disaster impacting the company and the investor's life at the same time makes it ideal to use a portfolio with at least a few different utility companies, even when the investor wants to use a utility dividend check to pay for their cost.

Utilities are mostly not diversified but you can do it on your own by investing smaller amounts into several sub-industries.

I've created two charts from my dividend growth utility database. The first table lists all utilities with a debt-to-equity ratio below one. I think its also important to have a look at financial ratios, especially when rates go up in the near future.

The second chart gives an overview of dividend growth utilities with a predicted 5% earnings growth for the next five years. It's a more bullish view on future earnings.

Here are the results…

20 Dividend Stocks With 4%+ Yield And Growth Ambitions

One of the smartest moves you can make before, during, and after a market correction is to load your portfolio with high-quality dividend-paying companies. 

Not only have companies that pay a dividend historically outperformed publicly listed companies that don't pay a dividend, but they offer other advantages as well. To begin with, the willingness of a company to pay a regular dividend signifies the health of its business model and portends that it likely has a positive long-term growth outlook.

In order to catch the highest yielding growth opportunities from the market that might offer low risk, if selected a few high yielders from the dividend growth space with future growth prospects.

These are my main criteria:

- 5-Year earnings growth forecast over 5 percent

- Over 4% dividend yield

- Consecutive dividend growth history over 10 years
- Market Cap over 2 billion

20 stocks fulfilled the above mentioned criteria of which 7 have a low forward P/E.

Here are 6 of my favorites….

12 Stocks With The Latest Dividend Growth

Attached are all stocks with dividend growth from the past week. There was a massive sell-off during the latest trading days of the week.

Well, it hurts me too but as a long-term investor, you must look at the next 20 or 30 years. I know that it's hard to stay disciplined and holding your first class assets while seeing them shrinking.

Only 12 companies have announced a dividend hike in the past week. ITC, Nordson, Dillard and Brinker are the biggest names. 

Here are the results:

21 Dividend Growers Go Ex-Dividend Next Week

Dividends are important for income investors. The ex-dividend date is an important date related to the dividend payment. If you buy the stock before the ex-date, you will receive the next dividend.

Today I like to show you the best dividend growers who have their ex-dividend date within the next week. A full list can be found here. I publish there on a weekly basis the dates and yield figures. If you want to know who pays the highest dividend yield, check out this site: 20 Highest Yielding Ex-Dividend Stocks Of The Upcoming Week June 29 – July 05, 2015.

Source: Forbes.com (click to enlarge)

Utilities and REITs are the highest yielding stocks on the list but cheap by forward P/E are only Duke, Crane and Ryder. Those are also high-beta stocks, except Duke.

But Duke has a debt to equity ratio of 1.07. Which stock do you favor?

The Best Stocks With Dividend Growth From Last Week (August 20 – August 26, 2012)

Stocks With Biggest Dividend Hikes From Last Week by Dividend Yield – Stock, Capital, Investment. Here is a current sheet of companies that have announced a dividend increase within the recent week. In total, 25 stocks and funds raised dividends of which 12 have a dividend growth of more than 10 percent. The average dividend growth amounts to 16.17 percent. Exactly 10 stocks have a yield over three percent and 10 are currently recommended to buy.