Bemis manufactures a variety of packaging, including for beverages.
Photo from Bemis website.
Standard & Poor’s announced yesterday that Royal Caribbean will replace packaging manufacturer Bemis in the S&P 500 at the close of trading on December 4th. Due to its market capitalization (about $4 billion), Bemis will move to the S&P MidCap 400. This means that Bemis will lose its Dividend Aristocrat status and become a High Yield Dividend Aristocrat. While this is a loss of prestige for Bemis, it doesn’t change their history of dividend growth. You shouldn’t necessarily sell Bemis based only on this change.
With the future removal of Family Dollar and Sigma-Aldrich due to acquisitions, this will eventually reduce the number of Dividend Aristocrats to 51.