Recs

9

4 Stocks That Hiked Dividends

Watch stocks you care about

The single, easiest way to keep track of all the stocks that matter...

Your own personalized stock watchlist!

It's a 100% FREE Motley Fool service...

Click Here Now

Not every company is slashing its dividend these days. Some of the market's better performers are easing up on their purse strings, sending more money out to their shareholders.

Readers of the Income Investor newsletter can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at four of the companies that inched their payouts higher last week.

We'll start with Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG  ) . The consumer giant behind everything from Pampers disposable diapers to Pringles potato chips is increasing its quarterly dividend by 10%, to $0.44 a share.

That's a healthy upgrade, but shareholders should be used to such hikes by now. Procter & Gamble has jacked up its distributions for 53 consecutive years.

H.B. Fuller (NYSE: FUL  ) is another company keeping its enviable streak alive. With last week's bump in its quarterly disbursements -- from $0.066 a share to $0.068 a share -- the specialty chemicals maker has delivered 40 straight years of ever-beefier yields.

People's United Financial (Nasdaq: PBCT  ) is another hiker. The financial services specialist's new payout rate is $0.1525 every three months. That's just a 2% increase, but all the same, there aren't too many financial companies growing both their yields and their profitability.

Finally we have International Speedway (Nasdaq: ISCA  ) stepping on the accelerator. The motorsports promoter and racetrack operator is revving up its annual distribution by 17% to $0.14 a share.

Some of these moves may not seem like much, but consider some of last week's less savory moves:

  • Hard drive titan Seagate (NYSE: STX  ) erased its quarterly dividend.
  • Banks Regions Financial (NYSE: RF  ) and PacWest Bancorp (Nasdaq: PACW  ) lowered their quarterly disbursements to a token $0.01 a share.

Subscribers to the Income Investor newsletter can appreciate companies that send more and more money to their investors. The newsletter singles out companies that are committed to growing their distributions, with market-thumping results.

Want to see what we're recommending these days? Go ahead and give the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing that will get hiked will be your interest.

Best Odds in the Universe!
If you're interested in a 98.79% chance at beating the market... and a 70.84% chance at DOUBLING the market's return – Motley Fool Supernova could be just what you're looking for. And get this: We arrived at these odds from 10,000 random back-tested portfolios composed of Motley Fool Co-founder David Gardner's personal stock picks.

It's why David recently handpicked a small team of world-class portfolio managers. You see, he thinks these odds can get even better! And he'd like to prove it to you...

Simply enter your email address. And the answer to the question everybody is asking will be delivered to your inbox!

Procter & Gamble is a Motley Fool Income Investor recommendation. The Fool owns shares of Procter & Gamble. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz pays attention to yield signs. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.


Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

Be the first one to comment on this article.

Compare Brokers

Fool Disclosure

DocumentId: 878493, ~/Articles/ArticleHandler.aspx, 2/14/2012 4:18:25 PM

Report This Comment

Use this area to report a comment that you believe is in violation of the community guidelines. Our team will review the entry and take any appropriate action.

Sending report...

Today's Market

updated Moments ago Sponsored by:
DOW 12,878.28 4.24 0.03%
S&P 500 1,350.50 -1.27 -0.09%
NASD 2,931.83 0.44 0.02%

Create My Watchlist

Go to My Watchlist

You don't seem to be following any stocks yet!

Better investing starts with a watchlist. Now you can create a personalized watchlist and get immediate access to the personalized information you need to make successful investing decisions.

Data delayed up to 5 minutes

Related Tickers

2/14/2012 3:43 PM
PBCT $12.54 Down -0.02 -0.16%
People's United Fi… CAPS Rating: ***
PG $64.43 Up +0.20 +0.31%
The Procter & Gamb… CAPS Rating: *****
FUL $29.43 Down -0.31 -1.04%
H.B. Fuller Compan… CAPS Rating: *****
ISCA $26.09 Down -0.33 -1.25%
International Spee… CAPS Rating: ***
RF $5.66 Down -0.09 -1.57%
Regions Financial… CAPS Rating: **

Advertisement