4 Dividend Stocks Showing You the Money

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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 and sending more money out to their shareholders.

Readers of the Income Investor newsletter service can appreciate that kind of thinking. So let's take a closer look at four of the companies that inched their payouts higher over the past few days.

We'll start with Clorox (Nasdaq: CLX). The company behind the namesake bleach and other supermarket staples, including Hidden Valley salad dressing and Glad trash bags, is jacking up its quarterly dividend by 9% to $0.50 a share. Shareholders have come to expect this kind of performance out of Clorox. The brand giant has delivered annual payout increases since 1977.

Then we have the "cheap chic" chain sending a little more spending money to its investors. Target's (NYSE: TGT) new quarterly distribution rate of $0.17 a share is a 6% improvement. The discount department store has never missed a dividend since going public in 1967, and it has a long history of bumping up its payouts over the years.

C.R. Bard (NYSE: BCR) is another dividend booster. The medical-products company is matching Target's move by increasing its quarterly disbursements by 6% to $0.17 a share.

Finally, we have VSE (Nasdaq: VSEC) bidding for income investors. The government contractor's new quarterly payouts will be $0.05 a share, 11% higher than its previous rate. VSE has delivered increases every year since 2004.

Some of these moves may not seem like much, but consider the less savory moves that took place in recent days:

• Callaway Golf (NYSE: ELY) landed on the rough, as the maker of oversized golf clubs became the latest company to slash its dividend to a token $0.01 a share.  
• Pipe maker Friedman Industries is cutting its quarterly dividend again. Its new rate of $0.03 a share is 75% lower than its payout from late 2008, when Friedman was still ratcheting up its yield.

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

Want to see what's being recommended these days? Give Income Investor a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing to get a boost will be your interest.