There are few things better than a hiked dividend. You may think I'm nuts, but it's more than just a few extra coins in your pocket every three months. It's a statement. It's the best way for a company to communicate that things are going well enough for it to share more of its wealth with its investors. 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 week.

We can start with SabreHoldings (NYSE:TSG). The travel-related transaction enabler boosted its dividend rate by 30%, to $0.13 a share every quarter. This parent company of Travelocity is toiling away in a sector that has bounced back since the post-9/11 days, when major airlines were cutting back on their flight schedules and business travelers were no longer chasing leads. Rewarding its investors with beefier checks isn't new to Sabre. It has been able to hike its quarterly dividend on an annual basis since it began its distributions in 2003.

Another company putting a tasty spin on its dividend was International Flavors & Fragrances (NYSE:IFF). The lab coats that concoct hot new perfumes for the cosmetics industry (as well as excel in manipulating extracts to create mainstream foodstuffs) cooked up a 14% spike to its quarterly distributions. The new dividend is $0.21 a share, and it's the fourth payout upgrade at IFF since 2003.

Apogee Enterprises (NASDAQ:APOG) was another hiker. The glass specialist is splitting pennies in announcing its new $0.0675 per-share dividend, but it is still a 4% improvement over its previous quarterly rate. Could it have gone higher? Perhaps. Last month, Apogee produced a better than expected 30% surge in its fiscal second-quarter profitability.

Finally, we have Shore Financial (NASDAQ:SHBK). The holding company for the Shore Bank chain in Virginia and Maryland is following up a recent 6-for-5 stock split with a 20% spike in its dividend. Investors in the financial services company will now be in line to cash out to the tune of $0.07 a share every quarter.

Subscribers to the 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. Who knows? Maybe the next thing 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 in this story. Rick 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.