Updated on January 28th, 2025 by Bob Ciura
Spreadsheet data updated daily
Utility stocks can make excellent investments for long-term dividend growth investors.
Durable, regulatory-based competitive advantages allow these companies to consistently raise their rates over time. In turn, this allows them to raise their dividend payments year in and year out.
Even better, many utility stocks have above-average dividend yields, providing a compelling combination of income now and growth later for long-term investors.
Because of these favorable industry characteristics, we’ve compiled a list of utility stocks. The list is derived from the major utility sector exchange-traded funds JXI and XLU.
You can download the list of all utility stocks (along with important financial ratios such as dividend yields and payout ratios) by clicking on the link below:
Keep reading this article to learn more about the benefits of investing in utility stocks.
Table Of Contents
The following table of contents provides for easy navigation:
- How To Use The Utility Stocks List
- Why Utility Dividend Stocks Make Attractive Investments
- The Top 10 Utility Stocks Now
- Top Utility Stock #10: RGC Resources (RGCO)
- Top Utility Stock #9: New Jersey Resources Corp. (NJR)
- Top Utility Stock #8: NorthWestern Energy Group (NWE)
- Top Utility Stock #7: Northwest Natural Holding Co. (NWN)
- Top Utility Stock #6: Edison International (EIX)
- Top Utility Stock #5: Artesian Resources Corp. (ARTNA)
- Top Utility Stock #4: Portland General Electric (POR)
- Top Utility Stock #3: California Water Service Group (CWT)
- Top Utility Stock #2: SJW Group (SJW)
- Top Utility Stock #1: Eversource Energy (ES)
How To Use The Utility Dividend Stocks List To Find Investment Ideas
Having an Excel database of all the dividend-paying utility stocks combined with important investing metrics and ratios is very useful.
This tool becomes even more powerful when combined with knowledge of how to use Microsoft Excel to find the best investment opportunities.
With that in mind, this section will provide a quick explanation of how you can instantly search for utility stocks with particular characteristics, using two screens as an example.
The first screen that we will implement is for utility stocks with price-to-earnings ratios below 15.
Screen 1: Low P/E Ratios
Step 1: Download the Utility Dividend Stocks Excel Spreadsheet List at the link above.
Step 2: Click the filter icon at the top of the price-to-earnings ratio column, as shown below.
Step 3: Change the filter field to “Less Than” and input “15” into the field beside it.
The remaining list of stocks contains dividend-paying utility stocks with price-to-earnings ratios less than 15. As you can see, there are relatively few securities (at the time of this writing) that meet this strict valuation cutoff.
The next section demonstrates how to screen for large-cap stocks with high dividend yields.
Screen 2: Large-Cap Stocks With High Dividend Yields
Businesses are often categorized based on their market capitalization. Market capitalization is calculated as stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding and gives a marked-to-market perception of what people think a business is worth on average.
Large-cap stocks are loosely defined as businesses with a market capitalization above $10 billion and are perceived as lower risk than their smaller counterparts. Accordingly, screening for large-cap stocks with high dividend yields could provide interesting investment opportunities for conservative, income-oriented investors.
Here’s how to use the Utility Dividend Stocks Excel Spreadsheet List to find such investment opportunities.
Step 1: Download the Utility Dividend Stocks Excel Spreadsheet List at the link above.
Step 2: Click the filter icon at the top of the Market Cap column, as shown below.
Step 3: Change the filter setting to “Greater Than”, and input 10000 into the field beside it. Note that since market capitalization is measured in millions of dollars in this Excel sheet, filtering for stocks with market capitalizations greater than “$10,000 millions” is equivalent for screening for those with market capitalizations exceeding $10 billion.
Step 4: Close that filter window (by exiting it, not by clicking ‘clear filter’) and click on the filter icon for the “dividend yield” column, as shown below.
Step 5: Change the filter setting to “Greater Than” and input 0.03 into the column beside it. Note that 0.03 is equivalent to 3%.
The remaining stocks in this list are those with market capitalizations above $10 billion and dividend yields above 3%. This narrowed investment universe is suitable for investors looking for low-risk, high-yield securities.
You now have a solid fundamental understanding of how to use the Utility Dividend Stocks Excel Spreadsheet List to its fullest potential.
The remainder of this article will discuss the characteristics that make the utility sector attractive for dividend growth investors.
Why Utility Dividend Stocks Make Attractive Investments
The word “utility” describes a wide variety of business models but is usually used as a reference to electric utilities — companies that engage in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity.
Other types of utilities include propane utilities and water utilities.
So why do these businesses make for attractive investments?
Utilities usually conduct business in highly regulated markets, complying with rules set by federal, state, and municipal governments.
While this sounds highly unattractive on the surface, what it means in practice is that utilities are basically legal monopolies.
The strict regulatory environment that utility businesses operate in creates a strong and durable competitive advantage for existing industry participants.
For this reason, electric utilities are among the most popular stocks for long-term dividend growth investors — especially because they tend to offer above-average dividend yields.
Indeed, the regulatory-based competitive advantages available to utility stocks give them the consistency to raise their dividends regularly.
Simply put, utility stocks are some of the most dependable dividend stocks around.
To provide a few examples, the following utility stocks have exceptionally long streaks of consecutive dividend increases:
- Consolidated Edison (ED) — more than 25 years of consecutive dividend increases
- American States Water (AWR) — a water utility — more than 50 years of consecutive dividend increases
- SJW Group (SJW) — another water utility — more than 50 years of consecutive dividend increases
The long streak of consecutive dividend increases is possible only because of their unique industry-specific competitive advantages.
Clearly, the utility sector is very stable. People are going to need electricity and water in ever-increasing amounts for the foreseeable future.
One characteristic that does not describe utility stocks is high growth. One of the regulatory constraints imposed upon utility companies is the pace at which they can increase the fees paid by their customers.
These rate increases are usually in the low-single-digits, which provides a cap on the revenue growth experienced by these companies.
Utility stocks typically don’t offer strong total returns, but there are exceptions.
The Top 10 Utility Stocks Now
Taking all of the above into consideration, the following section discusses our top 10 list of North American utility stocks today, based on their expected annual returns over the next five years.
The rankings in this article are derived from our expected total return estimates from the Sure Analysis Research Database.
The 10 utility stocks with the highest projected five-year total returns are ranked in this article, from lowest to highest.
Related: Watch the video below to learn how to calculate expected total return for any stock.
Expected returns are calculated based upon the combination of current dividend yield, expected change in valuation, as well as expected annual earnings-per-share growth.
This determines which utility stocks offer the best total return potential for shareholders.
The top 10 list below includes the 10 utility stocks with the highest annual expected returns.
Further, only utility stocks with a Dividend Risk Score of ‘C’ or higher were included, to focus on the utility stocks with a high level of dividend safety.
Top Utility Stock #10: RGC Resources Inc. (RGCO)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 10.9%
RGC Resources, Inc. operates as a distributor and seller of natural gas to industrial, commercial, and residential customers through its subsidiaries: Roanoke Gas, Midstream, and Diversified Energy.
Residential customers are the company’s largest customer segment, accounting for ~58% of the total revenues, followed by commercial customers at 34%.
The company operates in three segments: Gas Utility, the key revenue generator; Investment in Affiliates; and Parent & Other. The company was founded in 1883 and generates just under $100 million in annual revenue.
On November 14th, 2024, RGC Resources announced its Q4 2024 results. The company posted non-GAAP EPS of $0.01, beating the market’s estimate by $0.02, and total revenues of $13.10 million, which were up 5.11% year over year.
The earnings growth was driven by higher contributions from the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), primarily from Allowance for Funds Used During Construction (AFUDC) before the pipeline commenced operations in June 2024.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on RGCO (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #9: New Jersey Resources Corp. (NJR)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 11.0%
New Jersey Resources provides natural gas and clean energy services, transportation, distribution, asset management and home services through its five main subsidiaries. The company owns both regulated and non-regulated operations.
NJR’s principal subsidiary, New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG), owns and operates natural gas transportation and distribution infrastructure serving over half a million customers.
NJR Clean Energy Ventures (CEV) invests in and operates solar projects, to provide customers with low-carbon solutions.
NRJ Energy Services manages a portfolio of natural gas transportation and storage assets, as well as provides physical natural gas services to customers in North America.
The midstream subsidiary owns and invests in several large midstream gas projects.
Finally, the home services business provides heating, central air conditioning, water heaters, standby generators, and solar products to residential homes.
Source: Investor Presentation
New Jersey Resources was founded in 1952 and has paid a quarterly dividend since. The company has increased its annual dividend for 28 consecutive years.
New Jersey Resources reported fourth quarter 2024 results on November 25th, 2024, for the period ending September 30th, 2024. Fourth quarter net income of $91.1 million compared favorably to the prior year quarter’s $37.0 million.
Consolidated net financial earnings (NFE) amounted to $88.7 million, compared to net financial earnings (NFE) of $29.6 million in Q4 2023 and NFE per share of $0.89 compared to $0.30 per share one year ago.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on NJR (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #8: NorthWestern Energy Group (NWE)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 11.2%
NorthWestern Corp. is a Sioux Falls, South Dakota based electricity and gas utility. It has ~1,570 employees, and primarily serves the states of South Dakota and Montana.
Source: Investor Relations
The company has been dramatically overhauling its energy generation fleet. While NorthWestern long relied on coal for the majority of its power production, that has now shifted with wind, solar, and hydroelectric accounting for approximately 55% of total combined power generation today.
On July 29th, 2024, the company announced the acquisition of the Energy West natural gas utility distribution system, adding 33,000 additional customers in Montana to its broader business.
On October 28th, 2024, NorthWestern announced its Q3 2024 earnings. The results were slightly below expectations, although earnings-per-share of $0.65 increased from the $0.49 reported in the same period of last year. Revenues rose 7.5% year-over-year to $345 million.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on NWE (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #7: Northwest Natural Holding (NWN)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 11.7%
Northwest was founded over 160 years ago as a natural gas utility in Portland, Oregon.
It has grown from a very small, local utility that provided gas service to a handful of customers to a very successful regional utility with interests that now include water and wastewater, which were purchased in recent acquisitions.
The company’s locations served are shown in the image below.
Source: Investor Presentation
Northwest provides gas service to 2.5 million customers in ~140 communities in Oregon and Washington, serving more than 795,000 connections. It also owns and operates ~35 billion cubic feet of underground gas storage capacity.
Northwest Natural Holding Company reported a third-quarter 2024 net loss of $27.2 million, or $0.71 per share, compared to a net loss of $23.7 million, or $0.65 per share, in the same period in 2023. Revenue was $136.93 million, a 3.21% year-over-year decrease, but exceeded expectations by $4.47 million.
For the first nine months of 2024, net income was $33.9 million, or $0.88 per share, down from $49.2 million, or $1.37 per share, for the same period in 2023.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on NWN (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #6: Edison International (EIX)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 12.6%
Edison International is a renewable energy company that is active in energy generation and distribution. It also operates an energy services and a technologies business. The company was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Rosemead, CA.
On October 29, 2024, Edison International reported its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2024.
The company delivered a GAAP net income of $516 million, or $1.33 per diluted share, marking a substantial increase from $155 million, or $0.40 per diluted share, in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Edison achieved core earnings of $582 million, or $1.51 per diluted share, up from $531 million, or $1.38 per diluted share, in Q3 2023.
Revenue for the quarter was $5.20 billion, reflecting a 10.61% year-over-year growth and surpassing expectations by $192.39 million.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on Edison International (EIX) (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #5: Artesian Resources (ARTNA)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 13.2%
Artesian Resources Corp. was founded in 1905 in New Castle County, Delaware. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides water, wastewater and other services, primarily in the Delaware region.
Artesian Resources sells and distributes water to residential, commercial, industrial, governmental, and utility customers throughout the state.
In addition, Artesian Resources provides water for public and private fire protection in Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
The company produces 7.9 billion gallons of water annually through 1,311 miles of water main with a population of approximately 301,000 served.
Artesian Resources Corporation (ARTNA) reported third quarter for 2024, with net income reaching $6.8 million, marking a 34.4% increase over the previous year. This resulted in a diluted net income per share of $0.66, compared to $0.49 in Q3 2023.
Revenue rose by 9.7% to $29.1 million, largely driven by an 11.3% increase in water sales. This growth was due to both a temporary and final rate increase implemented by the Delaware Public Service Commission, and higher water consumption linked to drier weather and an expanded customer base.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on ARTNA (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #4: Portland General Electric Company (POR)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 14.8%
Portland General Electric is an electric utility based in Portland, Oregon, providing electricity to more than 930,000 customers in 51 cities.
The company owns or contracts more than 3.5 gigawatts of energy generation, between gas, coal, wind & solar, and hydro.
On April 19th, 2024, Portland General Electric announced a 5% increase in the quarterly dividend to $0.50 per share.
Portland General reported third quarter 2024 results on October 25th, 2024. It reported net income of $94 million for the quarter, equal to $0.90 per diluted share on a GAAP basis, compared to $0.46 in Q3 2023.
Retail energy deliveries rose 0.3% year-to-date compared to the same prior year period, but wholesale energy deliveries soared 45%. As a result, total energy deliveries rose 11%.
Leadership narrowed its 2024 full year guidance for adjusted earnings per share to $3.13 at the midpoint based on a series of assumptions, most notably a 2.5% increase in annual energy deliveries.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on Portland General Electric Company (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #3: California Water Service Group (CWT)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 15.0%
California Water Service is a water stock and is the third-largest publicly-owned water utility in the United States.
It was founded in 1926 and has six subsidiaries that provide water to approximately 2 million people in 100 communities, primarily in California but also in Washington, New Mexico and Hawaii.
Source: Investor Presentation
California Water Service reported its third quarter earnings results on October 31st. Operating revenues totaled $300 million during the quarter, which was 18% higher than the same quarter last year.
The operating revenue increase was driven by rate increases over the last year as well as by higher accrued unbilled revenue compared to the previous year’s quarter.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on CWT (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #2: SJW Group (SJW)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 18.4%
SJW Group is a water utility company that produces, purchases, stores, purifies and distributes water to consumers and businesses in the Silicon Valley area of California, the area north of San Antonio, Texas, Connecticut, and Maine.
SJW Group has a small real estate division that owns and develops properties for residential and warehouse customers in California and Tennessee. The company generates about $670 million in annual revenues.
Source: Investor Presentation
On October 28th, 2024, SJW Group reported third quarter results for the period ending June 30th, 2024. For the quarter, revenue grew 9.9% to $225.1 million, beating estimates by $11.6 million.
Earnings-per-share of $1.18 compared favorably to earnings-per-share of $1.13 in the prior year and was $0.04 more than expected.
As with prior periods, the improvement in revenue was mostly due to SJW Group’s California and Connecticut businesses, which benefited from higher water rates, while growth in customers aided the Texas business.
Higher rates overall added $40 million to results for the quarter, higher customer usage added $4.8 million, and growth in customers contributed $2.4 million. Operating production expenses totaled $166.7 million, which was a 12% increase from the prior year.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on SJW (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Top Utility Stock #1: Eversource Energy (ES)
- 5-year expected annual returns: 19.0%
Eversource Energy is a diversified holding company with subsidiaries that provide regulated electric, gas, and water distribution service in the Northeast U.S.
The company’s utilities serve more than 4 million customers after acquiring NStar’s Massachusetts utilities in 2012, Aquarion in 2017, and Columbia Gas in 2020.
Eversource has delivered steady growth to shareholders for many years.
Source: Investor Presentation
On November 4th, 2024, Eversource Energy released its third-quarter 2024 results for the period ending September 30th, 2024.
For the quarter, the company reported a net loss of $(118.1) million, a sharp decline from earnings of $339.7 million in the same quarter of last year, which reflects the impact of the company’s exit from offshore wind investments.
The company reported a loss per share of $(0.33), compared with earnings-per-share of $0.97 in the prior year. Earnings from the Electric Transmission segment increased to $174.9 million, up from $160.3 million in the prior year, primarily due to a higher level of investment in Eversource’s electric transmission system.
Click here to download our most recent Sure Analysis report on ES (preview of page 1 of 3 shown below):
Final Thoughts
The utility sector is a great place to find high-quality dividend stocks suitable for long-term investment.
It is not, however, the only place to find attractive investments.
If you’re willing to venture outside of the utility industry for investment opportunities, the following Sure Dividend databases are very useful:
- The Dividend Aristocrats: dividend growth stocks with 25+ years of consecutive dividend increases
- The Dividend Kings List is even more exclusive than the Dividend Aristocrats. It is comprised of 54 stocks with 50+ years of consecutive dividend increases.
- The High Yield Dividend Kings List is comprised of the 20 Dividend Kings with the highest current yields.
- The High Dividend Stocks List: stocks that appeal to investors interested in the highest yields of 5% or more.
- The Monthly Dividend Stocks List: stocks that pay dividends every month, for 12 dividend payments per year.
- The 20 Highest Yielding Monthly Dividend Stocks: Monthly dividend stocks with the highest current yields.
- The Dividend Champions List: stocks that have increased their dividends for 25+ consecutive years.
Note: Not all Dividend Champions are Dividend Aristocrats because Dividend Aristocrats have additional requirements like being in The S&P 500. - The Complete List of Russell 2000 Stocks: arguably the world’s best-known benchmark for small-cap U.S. stocks.
If you’re looking for other sector-specific dividend stocks, the following Sure Dividend databases will be useful:
- The Complete List Of Technology Stocks
- The Complete List Of Communication Services Stocks
- The Complete List Of Consumer Staples Stocks
- The Complete List Of Consumer Discretionary Stocks
- The Complete List Of Healthcare Stocks
- The Complete List Of Financial Stocks
- The Complete List Of Real Estate Stocks
- The Complete List Of Energy Stocks
- The Complete List Of Materials Stocks
- The Complete List Of Industrial Stocks