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 these past few days.
We can start with Ford (F 1.00%). The popular automaker is revving up its yield by doubling its quarterly dividend. Pushing its quarterly distributions to $0.10 a share comes at a time when sales of cars and light trucks are at multiyear highs.
Plains All American Pipeline (PAA 1.07%) is also a gusher. The limited partnership's new quarterly rate of $0.5625 per unit -- or $2.25 on an annualized basis -- keeps an impressive streak of quarterly increases going. Plains All American's new rate is nearly 4% higher than it was three months ago and almost 10% ahead of where it was a year earlier. The stock hit a fresh 52-week high on Thursday.
Goldcorp (GG) is also handing over more of the shiny stuff to its stakeholders. The major gold producer's new monthly rate of $0.05 a share represents an 11% increase. Fellow Fool and metals expert Christopher Barker likes Goldcorp's prospects here, and it wasn't even the only miner with a major payout boost. Another Vancouver-based gold producer -- Eldorado Gold (EGO 0.31%) -- also bumped its yield higher last week.
Finally, we have DDR (SITC 0.50%) giving its investors some more food-court spending money. The REIT that watches over 459 value-oriented shopping centers will be shelling out $0.135 a share this quarter. This is a nearly 13% improvement over its rate during the holiday quarter.