Dividend Aristocrats 2015 Investment Performance

In a previous series I highlighted the business and investment performance of the "Dividend Aristocrats" - companies that have not only paid but also increased their respective payouts for at least two and a half decades - from 2005 through 2014. This review included revenue, profit, EPS and share price growth to go along with the total return generated by the companies.
A number of things stuck out in this review. First, the annualized total returns came in a wide variety: anywhere from 4% to 22%, turning a $10,000 starting investment into between $14,000 and $60,000 nine years later. Every single remaining Dividend Aristocrat had a positive return over the period. Naturally this does not have to hold in the future, but it's interesting to note nonetheless. It's easy to get caught up in everyday price fluctuations, hourly "news" or the next big story. Yet many forget that over the long-term profitable businesses tend to get more profitable, resulting in positive returns.
Beyond this notion, there are many other interesting tidbits like whether not revenues, profits, earnings and EPS are working "together" or against one another via changing multiples or margins. For this commentary I'd like to focus on the investment performance over the past year. The previous series focused on performance from 2005 through 2014. The table below shows what happened to each Dividend Aristocrat from December 31st of 2014 through December 31st of... Read more