12 Top Yielding Stocks With Potential To Double Dividends

Dividend stocks can be the foundation of a great retirement portfolio. Not only do the payments put money in your pocket, which can help hedge against any dips in the stock market, they're usually a sign of a financially sound company.

Dividends also give investors a painless opportunity to reinvest in a stock, thus compounding gains over time. However, not all income stocks live up to their full potential.

Using the payout ratio -- i.e., the percentage of profits a company returns to its shareholders as dividends -- we can get a good bead on whether a company has room to increase its dividend. Ideally, we like to see healthy payout ratios between 50% and 75%.

I run a screen to find some good stock ideas that could offer upside in terms of dividend payments.

My criteria were low payout (under 50%), low debt (under 0.5), solid growth (over 5% for the next five years) and finally a dividend yield over 3 percent. 12 stocks keep on the screen. Each has a market cap over 2 billion.

Here are 12 income stocks with payout ratios currently below 50% that could potentially double their dividends in the future easily....

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:

Ex-Dividend Stocks: Best Dividend Paying Shares On August 22, 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.

In total, 16 stocks go ex dividend - of which 3 yield more than 3 percent. The average yield amounts to 2.68%. Here is a full list of all stocks with ex-dividend date within the upcoming week.

Here is the sheet of the best yielding, higher capitalized ex-dividend stocks:

Company	Ticker	Mcap	P/E	P/B	P/S	Yield
Intersections Inc.	INTX	177.93M	17.00	1.72	0.53	8.11%
Pan American Silver Corp.	PAAS	2.07B	-	0.77	2.26	3.66%
Atmos Energy Corporation	ATO	3.77B	17.07	1.46	1.01	3.36%
FirstMerit Corporation	FMER	3.63B	17.81	1.42	6.16	2.79%
HollyFrontier Corporation	HFC	9.25B	5.91	1.48	0.45	2.62%
Symantec Corporation	SYMC	18.30B	24.77	3.33	2.63	2.28%
Assurant Inc.	AIZ	4.27B	11.04	0.89	0.49	1.82%
Dunkin' Brands Group, Inc.	DNKN	4.66B	36.83	13.14	6.88	1.76%
Robert Half International Inc.	RHI	5.13B	22.14	5.95	1.24	1.70%
Old Line Bancshares Inc.	OLBK	89.93M	12.87	1.20	2.37	1.22%
Apollo Global Management, LLC	APO	3.91B	8.00	3.70	1.06	0.98%
Guaranty Bancorp	GBNK	240.52M	19.88	1.30	3.49	0.87%
LSB Financial Corp.	LSBI	37.58M	13.88	0.95	2.47	0.83%
Haverty Furniture Companies	HVT	574.87M	28.18	2.11	0.81	0.62%
Hecla Mining Co.	HL	1.13B	-	0.85	3.49	0.27%
Radian Group Inc.	RDN	2.26B	-	2.51	3.10	0.08%