The Most Undervalued And Overvalued Dividend Champions - September 2016

A little over a year ago, in June of 2015, I started a series of articles in which I highlight the stocks from the Dividend Champions list that have the highest and the lowest Percent Above the Average Yield (PAAY) over the past year and over the past five years. PAAY is a measure of how much a stock is above (high PAAY, undervalued) or below (low PAAY, overvalued) its usual yield, and can be an indication that the stock is mispriced. Please see my previous article for the Aug 2016 list. In this article, I present the updated list for August. Please note that the Dividend Champions list is maintained by David Fish. I trust him to maintain the list, and I assume that the information he presents is accurate. Any changes to the list are made by him. All historical price and dividend data used to calculate the PAAY was taken from Yahoo Finance. I attempted to correct any errors that I found or that were pointed out to me by others.
Before I start, as I do in each of these articles, let me give a quick review of the thought process behind PAAY for those who are not familiar with it. Many stocks can trade within a fairly consistent range of yields over time. But if you find a stock that is trading at a higher yield than it usually does, it may be an indication that it is undervalued. There can be two reasons for an above-average yield: the price is down, or the dividend has increased. Or, of course, it could be a combination of both. If the price is down, and yet the business prospects... Read more