Dividend checks continue to get fatter in Corporate America, as more companies jack up their distribution rates.
Readers of the Income Investor newsletter can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at some of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.
Let's start with Huntington Bancshares (Nasdaq: HBAN ) . The Ohio-based banker is finally improving to the point of shedding its token penny quarterly dividend. It will be quadrupling its rate to $0.04 a share every three months. This may not seem like much, but it amounts to a reasonable 2.6% yield given its low share price.
Gannett (NYSE: GCI ) is also stopping the presses by doubling its quarterly rate to $0.08 a share. Declines in print publishing ad and circulation revenue aren't getting in the way of the company behind USA Today returning more money to its shareholders tomorrow. It also announced that it will be resuming a share buyback plan that was originally introduced five years ago.
CARBO Ceramics (NYSE: CRR ) is also turning its distributions into a work of art. The maker of ceramic proppant used in fracturing oil and gas wells and provider of fracture simulation software is bumping its quarterly payout 20% to $0.24 a share. CARBO has come through with higher disbursements in each of the past 11 years.
Finally, we have Altera (Nasdaq: ALTR ) on the move. The provider of programmable solutions in the tech realm is giving its quarterly payout a 33% boost to $0.08 a share. Double-digit gains in sales and earnings over the previous year's second quarter made it an easy call to make.
These stocks join several limited partnerships -- Calumet Specialty Products (Nasdaq: CLMT ) , MarkWest Energy (NYSE: MWE ) , and Kinder Morgan Energy (NYSE: KMP ) -- in recently moving their rates higher.
Subscribers to the Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending 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 is being recommended 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.
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