4 Stocks That Hiked Dividends

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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.