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 Paychex (Nasdaq: PAYX ) .
The provider of payroll, human resource, and benefits outsourcing solutions is juicing up its quarterly distributions by 3% to $0.32 a share. This is the first time that Paychex has jacked up its rate in more than three years. As the stock is a decent bellwether for corporate America, this has to be a good sign.
Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD ) is another gusher, even if it may seem to be implementing an inconsequential upgrade at first. Its quarterly rate is merely going from $0.605 a share to $0.6125 a share. However, Enterprise has been able to boost its distributions for 29 quarters in a row. Yes, 29 quarters. Over the past seven years, the provider of midstream energy services has managed to juice up its yield every three months. We may be talking about fractional upticks sequentially, but Enterprise's payout is now 5% higher than it was a year ago.
A. Schulman (Nasdaq: SHLM ) is also bouncing higher. The supplier of plastic compounds and resins is coming through with a 10% hike. Shareholders will now be receiving $0.17 a share every three months.
Finally we have Ameren (NYSE: AEE ) turning up the power. The St. Louis-based electric utility is lifting its quarterly rate 4% higher to $0.40 a share. The move props Ameren's yield up to a healthy 5.2%.
These companies join limited partnerships Calumet Specialty Products (Nasdaq: CLMT ) , Genesis Energy (NYSE: GEL ) , and Western Gas (NYSE: WES ) in recently jacking up their yields.
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.
If you want to track these stocks to see if and when they hike their payouts, consider adding them to MyWatchlist.
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