Raise your dividend, and the market smiles with you. That is, of course, assuming that you have the means to grow your yield without upsetting your balance sheet. Which is why income investors often get a bonus when they buy into perpetual dividend hikers. Because it's not all about getting fatter quarterly checks -- odds are that these companies have improving fundamentals as well.
Let's take a closer look at four of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.
Altria
In many ways, St. Joe
Government communications specialist Harris
Another hiker was Berry Petroleum
Subscribers to our Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending more and more money to their investors. Analyst Mathew Emmert has often singled out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.
Want to see what Mathew's liking these days? Go ahead and give his newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription to Income Investor. Who knows? Maybe the next thing that will get hiked will be your interest.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz pays attention to yield signs. He does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has an ironclad disclosure policy .