4 Dividend Stocks Showing You the Money

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz
November 9, 2009 | Comments (4)

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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 Motley Fool Income Investor newsletter service can appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at some of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.

We can start with Emerson Electric (NYSE: EMR). Earnings took a hit in its latest quarter, but healthy free cash flow -- $2.6 billion generated over the past year alone -- is giving Emerson plenty of wiggle room to increase its quarterly distributions by a half-penny to $0.335 a share.

Aaron's (NYSE: AAN) leases out recliners, but it's not stretching out for a snooze. The furniture-rental chain is jacking up its quarterly dividend by 6% to $0.018 a share. It's a tiny sum, I know. Aaron's is yielding just 0.3% at the moment. However, the company has boosted its rate for five consecutive years.

Fashion-savvy Polo Ralph Lauren (NYSE: RL) also knows how to make its dividend checks look more stylish. The premium-apparel trendsetter is doubling its quarterly disbursements to $0.10 a share.

Finally, we have Montpelier Re (NYSE: MRH) on the move. The insurer's new payout rate of $0.09 a share every three months is a 20% improvement.

Some of these moves may not seem like much, but consider the companies going the other way. El Paso (NYSE: EP) and Bank Mutual (Nasdaq: BKMU) were among those cutting their dividends.

Income Investor subscribers always have their eyes fixed on 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 the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing to get a boost will be your interest.

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MontpelierRe is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick and a Motley Fool Hidden Gems selection. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz pays attention to yield signs. He owns no shares in any of the companies in this story and 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.

  • Report this Comment On November 09, 2009, at 3:54 PM, pondee619 wrote:

    By what logic do you call Aaron's and Polo Ralph Lauren "dividend stocks"? Neither pays more than a one half of one percent yield.

    How many like increases will it take before MRH meets its dividend of Septemvber 2005? You know, like when it was an HG pick?

    Are you really advocating these issues bacause of their dividends?

  • Report this Comment On November 09, 2009, at 5:14 PM, TMFBreakerRick wrote:

    pondee, it's not the yield -- but the presumed confidence of companies feeling freer about doling out chunkier dividends.

  • Report this Comment On November 10, 2009, at 8:17 AM, pondee619 wrote:

    6% to $0.018 a share? Works our to, what, $.001+/- a share increase? You call that doling out CHUNKIER dividends. What do they do if they are only tossing out crumbs? How many years before they approach a money market fund? I thought these "dividend stocks" were showing us the money. Where is it?

  • Report this Comment On November 10, 2009, at 8:42 AM, Shindoesca wrote:

    With all due respect to the writer, these shares aren't worthy or the subject title. You would expect featured companies like EPD, PWE, PVR, NRF, VOD, RDSA, ENI, VAST, etc in articles focused on steady dividends.

    It would be interesting to see more articles on steady +5% dividend companies like the utilities, oil sector, pipelines, telecom or high quality income funds from companies like Pimco with steady monthly distributions.

    Also more feature articles looking at specific regions or sectors like best emerging markets (India, China, Brazil, Peru for example) or shipping. Compare a DSX or a FREE to DRYS.

    This article was below par unfortunately :(

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Related Tickers

11/20/2009 4:01 PM
EMR $41.68 Down -0.18 -0.43%
Emerson Electric C… CAPS Rating: *****
EP $9.56 Down -0.07 -0.73%
El Paso Corp CAPS Rating: ****
MRH $17.20 Up +0.10 +0.58%
Montpelier Re Hold… CAPS Rating: ****
RL $78.57 Down -0.14 -0.18%
Polo Ralph Lauren… CAPS Rating: **
BKMU $7.00 Up +0.09 +1.30%
Bank Mutual Corp CAPS Rating: *

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