Photo: Freeimages.com/Penny Mathews
A couple of weeks ago I posted an article with 4 places to find dividend information for your favorite dividend growth stocks. But, of course, you have to know about the stock in the first place. This week, I’d like to share 4 places to find current and potential dividend growth stocks.
The DRIP Investing Website
I mentioned David Fish’s website before, as a great resource to find information on dividend growth companies. David groups companies into three lists: “Dividend Champions” have grown dividends for at least 25 years, “Dividend Challengers” have grown dividends for between 10 and 24 years, and “Dividend Contenders” have grown dividends for between 5 and 9 years. He provides downloadable lists in Excel and PDF format on the DRIP Investing Tools page.
For investors outside the United States, David also provides a list of dividend growth stocks in the United Kingdom, Canada and Sweden.
Dividend Growth ETFs
Where better to go to find potential dividend growth stocks than to an investment dedicated to it? The holdings of exchange traded funds that invest exclusively in current and potential dividend growth stocks are basically lists of these investments. In addition to seeing companies that have consistently increased their dividends (like the S&P Dividend Aristocrats), you also get the benefit of the analysis by these ETF companies to identify companies without that history but that have the potential to increase dividends going forward.
For example, the iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF (DGRO) holds many well-known dividend growth companies like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Procter & Gamble (PG) and ExxonMobil (XOM). But it also includes United Parcel Service (UPS) and Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY), both of which have grown dividends for 7 years straight after holding the payout flat through the 2008 – 2009 recession. You can find the list of DGRO’s holdings at iShares’ website. Another ETF worth looking at is Vanguard’s Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG); the list of holdings is available at Vanguard’s website.
Dividend Growth Mutual Funds
Just like ETFs, mutual funds are a great place to find the results of independent research into dividend growth companies. Two funds to start with are Vanguard’s Dividend Growth Fund and T. Rowe Price’s Dividend Growth Fund. The links above go to their list of holdings.
If you aren’t partial to these two funds, there are lots of other dividend growth mutual funds across many different mutual fund families. Most investment companies make the lists of their funds’ holdings publicly available and you can usually find these lists on the companies’ websites.
The Harvesting Dividends Website
OK, this may seem self-serving, but as part of my mission to provide information for dividend growth investors I have published descriptions of more than 150 dividend growth companies on the Harvesting Dividends website. These descriptions include information on each company’s dividend growth history and the dividend reinvestment programs. You can also find companies by industry sector and by index membership. Just click on the category at the top of the web page to bring up a list of companies that fall into those categories.
The bottom line is that there are lots of places to start a search for companies dedicated to returning value to their shareholders in the form of dividends, and lots of companies to choose from. All you need to do is look.