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2023 Dividend Kings List | Updated Daily | All 50 Analyzed


Updated on October 3rd, 2023 by Bob Ciura
Spreadsheet data updated daily

The Dividend Kings are the best-of-the-best in dividend longevity.

What is a Dividend King? A stock with 50 or more consecutive years of dividend increases.

The downloadable Dividend Kings Spreadsheet List below contains the following for each stock in the index among other important investing metrics:

You can see the full downloadable spreadsheet of all 50 Dividend Kings (along with important financial metrics such as dividend yields, payout ratios, and price-to-earnings ratios) by clicking on the link below:

 

Click here to instantly download your free spreadsheet of all Dividend Kings now, along with important investing metrics.

The Dividend Kings list includes recent additions such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Walmart (WMT), Nucor Corp. (NUE), and Gorman-Rupp (GRC).

Each Dividend King satisfies the primary requirement to be a Dividend Aristocrat (25 years of consecutive dividend increases) twice over.

Not all Dividend Kings are Dividend Aristocrats.

This unexpected result is because the ‘only’ requirement to be a Dividend Kings is 50+ years of rising dividends.

On the other hand, Dividend Aristocrats must have 25+ years of rising dividends, be a member of the S&P 500 Index, and meet certain minimum size and liquidity requirements.

Table of Contents

How To Use The Dividend Kings List to Find Dividend Stock Ideas

The Dividend Kings list is a great place to find dividend stock ideas. However, not all the stocks in the Dividend Kings list make a great investment at any given time.

Some stocks might be overvalued. Conversely, some might be undervalued – making great long-term holdings for dividend growth investors.

For those unfamiliar with Microsoft Excel, the following walk-through shows how to filter the Dividend Kings list for the stocks with the most attractive valuation based on the price-to-earnings ratio.

Step 1: Download the Dividend Kings Excel Spreadsheet.

Step 2: Follow the steps in the instructional video below. Note that we screen for price-to-earnings ratios of 15 or below in the video. You can choose any threshold that best defines ‘value’ for you.

Dividend Kings PE Screen

Alternatively, following the instructions above and filtering for higher dividend yield Dividend Kings (yields of 2% or 3% or higher) will show stocks with 50+ years of rising dividends and above-average dividend yields.

Looking for businesses that have a long history of dividend increases isn’t a perfect way to identify stocks that will increase their dividends every year in the future, but there is considerable consistency in the Dividend Kings.

The 5 Best Dividend Kings Today

The following 5 stocks are our top-ranked Dividend Kings today, based on expected annual returns over the next 5 years. Stocks are ranked in order of lowest to highest expected annual returns.

Total returns include a combination of future earnings-per-share growth, dividends, and any changes in the P/E multiple.

Dividend King #5: Black Hills Corporation (BKH)

Black Hills Corporation is an electric utility that provides electricity and natural gas to customers in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

The company has 1.33 million utility customers in eight states. Its natural gas assets include 47,000 miles of natural gas lines. Separately, it has ~9,000 miles of electric lines and 1.4 gigawatts of electric generation capacity.

Source: Investor Presentation

In the 2023 second quarter, revenues of $410 million declined 13% year-over-year and missed the consensus estimate by $50 million. Earnings-per-share of $0.35 was slightly below the consensus analyst estimate. The utility forecasts earnings-per-share of $3.65 to $3.85 for the current fiscal year.

Utilities like Black Hills are resistant to recessions as demand for electricity and gas is not very cyclical. Black Hills should remain profitable under most circumstances. The fact that customers tend to stick with their provider means that Black Hills operates a relatively stable business model.

Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on BKH (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):

Dividend King #4: Sysco Corporation (SYY)

Sysco Corporation is the largest wholesale food distributor in the United States. The company serves 600,000 locations with food delivery, including restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels, and other facilities. According to estimates, the company has a 16% market share of total food delivery within the United States.

Source: Investor Presentation

On August 1st, 2023, Sysco reported fourth-quarter results for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. In the fourth quarter, Sysco achieved a 4.1% sales increase compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year, with U.S. Foodservice volume rising by 2.3%. Adjusted EPS rose by 16.5% to $1.34, compared to the previous fiscal year.

For the entire fiscal year 2023, Sysco grew revenue by 11% with a 5.2% rise in U.S. Foodservice volume. Adjusted earnings-per-share increased 23% to $4.01.

Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on SYY (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):

Dividend King #3: Stanley Black & Decker (SWK)

Stanley Black & Decker is a world leader in power tools, hand tools, and related items. The company holds the top global position in tools and storage sales. The company is composed of two segments: tools & outdoor, and industrial.

Source: Investor Presentation

In the 2023 second quarter, revenue fell 5.3% to $4.2 billion, but this was $70 million more than expected. The company reported an adjusted earnings-per-share loss of $0.11, compared with a profit of $1.77 per share in the same quarter last year.

Organic growth fell 4% for the quarter. Organic sales for Tools & Outdoor, the largest segment within the company, declined 5% as a 1% benefit from pricing was once again more than offset by a decline in volume. North America was down 6% while Europe was lower by 3% for the quarter.

Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on SWK (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):

Dividend King #2: Target Corporation (TGT)

Target is a discount retail operations solely in the U.S. market. Its business consists of about 2,000 big box stores offering general merchandise and food and serving as distribution points for its burgeoning e-commerce business.

Target has invested heavily in e-commerce. The rise in e-commerce initially caught many retail companies flat-footed. Target has really revamped its online offerings and has seen incredible growth rates.

Source: Investor Presentation

Target posted second quarter earnings on August 16th, 2023, and results were somewhat mixed. Adjusted earnings-per-share came in well ahead of estimates at $1.80, which was 38 cents better than expected.

Revenue was $24.8 billion, down 4.9% year-over-year, and missing estimates by $460 million. The company also lowered its full-year sales and profit expectations due to weakening sales, but rising margins.

Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on Target Corporation (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):

Dividend King #1: 3M Company (MMM)

3M sells more than 60,000 products that are used every day in homes, hospitals, office buildings and schools around the world. It has about 95,000 employees and serves customers in more than 200 countries.

3M is now composed of four separate divisions: Safety & Industrial, Healthcare, Transportation & Electronics, and Consumer. 

The company also announced that it would be spinning off its Health Care segment into a standalone entity.

Source: Investor Presentation

3M’s innovation is one of the company’s greatest competitive advantages. The company targets R&D spending equivalent to 6% of sales (~$2 billion annually) in order to create new products to meet consumer demand.

This spending has proven to be very beneficial to the company as 30% of sales during the last fiscal year were from products that didn’t exist five years ago. 3M’s commitment to developing innovative products has led to a portfolio of more than 100,000 patents.

Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on 3M (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):

Analysis Reports On All 50 Dividend Kings

All 50 Dividend Kings are listed below by sector. You can access detailed coverage of each by clicking on the name of each Dividend King.

Additionally, you can download our newest Sure Analysis Research Database report for each Dividend King as well.

Basic Materials

Consumer Discretionary

Consumer Staples

Energy

Financial Services

Healthcare

Industrial

Real Estate

Utilities

Performance Of The Dividend Kings

The Dividend Kings under-performed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) in September 2023. Return data for the month is shown below:

Stable dividend growers like the Dividend Kings tend to underperform in bull markets and outperform on a relative basis during bear markets.

The Dividend Kings are not officially regulated and monitored by any one company. There’s no Dividend King ETF. This means that tracking the historical performance of the Dividend Kings can be difficult. More specifically, performance tracking of the Dividend Kings often introduces significant survivorship bias.

Survivorship bias occurs when one looks at only the companies that ‘survived’ the time period in question. In the case of Dividend Kings, this means that the performance study does not include ex-Kings that reduced their dividend, were acquired, etc.

But with that said, there is something to be gained from investigating the historical performance of the Dividend Kings. Specifically, the performance of the Dividend Kings shows that ‘boring’ established blue-chip stocks that increase their dividend year-after-year can significantly outperform over long periods of time.

Notes: S&P 500 performance is measured using the S&P 500 ETF (SPY). The Dividend Kings performance is calculated using an equal weighted portfolio of today’s Dividend Kings, rebalanced annually. Due to insufficient data, Farmers & Merchants Bancorp (FMCB) returns are from 2000 onward. Performance excludes previous Dividend Kings that ended their streak of dividend increases which creates notable lookback/survivorship bias. The data for this study is from Ycharts.

In the next section of this article, we will provide an overview of the sector and market capitalization characteristics of the Dividend Kings.

Sector & Market Capitalization Overview

The sector and market capitalization characteristics of the Dividend Kings are very different from the characteristics of the broader stock market.

The following bullet points show the number of Dividend Kings in each sector of the stock market.

The Dividend Kings are overweight in the Industrials, Consumer Staples, and Utilities sectors. Interestingly, The Dividend Kings have just one stock from the Information Technology sector, which is the largest component of the S&P 500 index.

The Dividend Kings also have some interesting characteristics with respect to market capitalization. These trends are illustrated below.

Interestingly, 22 out of the 50 Dividend Kings have market capitalizations below $10 billion. This shows that corporate longevity doesn’t have to be accompanied by massive size.

Final Thoughts

Screening to find the best Dividend Kings is not the only way to find high-quality dividend growth stock ideas.

Sure Dividend maintains similar databases on the following useful universes of stocks:

There is nothing magical about investing in the Dividend Kings. They are simply a group of high-quality businesses with shareholder-friendly management teams that have strong competitive advantages.

Purchasing businesses with these characteristics at fair or better prices and holding them for long periods of time will likely result in strong long-term investment performance.

Click here to instantly download your free spreadsheet of all Dividend Kings now, along with important investing metrics.

Thanks for reading this article. Please send any feedback, corrections, or questions to support@suredividend.com.


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