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 can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at four of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past quarter.
Let's start with Lazard (NYSE: LAZ ) . Not every financial advisory firm is holding its money closer. Lazard's new quarterly dividend of $0.125 a share is a 25% improvement on its earlier rate.
Despite plunging profits in the face of lower oil prices, Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) came through with a modest upgrade to its quarterly distributions. The new rate of $0.68 a share is a 5% upgrade. Chevron has now delivered 22 consecutive years of payout increases.
Kaydon (NYSE: KDN ) , an industrial parts specialist, is ratcheting up its payout by 6% to $0.18 a share. Kaydon's financial performance retreated, but it apparently wasn't enough to scare the company into scaling back on its yield.
Finally, we have Harleysville Group (Nasdaq: HGIC ) . Shareholders will now be receiving $0.325 a share every three months, or 8% more, from the insurer.
Some of these moves may not seem like much, but consider these less savory moves: Avery Dennison (NYSE: AVY ) , Wintrust Financial (Nasdaq: WTFC ) , and Cathay General Bancorp (Nasdaq: CATY ) all declared lower distributions last week.
The Income Investor newsletter singles out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.
Want to see what is being recommended these days? Go ahead and give the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial. Who knows? Maybe the next thing to get a boost will be your interest.
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