Dividend Champions For May 2017

The Dividend Champions spreadsheet and PDF have been updated through 4/28/17 and are available here. Note that all references to Champions mean companies that have paid higher dividends for at least 25 straight years; Contenders have streaks of 10-24 years; and Challengers have streaks of 5-9 years. "CCC" refers to the universe of Champions, Contenders, and Challengers.
Two New Champions Highlight April Action
April saw the promotion of the newest Champions, Franklin Electric Co. (Nasdaq: FELE) and People's United Financial (Nasdaq: PBCT), both of which recorded their 25th straight year of higher dividends, boosting the number of Champions to 110. That number may dip again, though, as C.R. Bard (NYSE: BCR) became the third current Champion to agree to be acquired, selling itself to Becton Dickinson (NYSE: BDX) this past week. (Both companies have 45-year streaks of increases.) Being acquired is the only "good" kind of deletion, as I explained in my recent article about Dividend Streaks in Danger.
After the CCC universe expanded to a total of 816 companies at the end of March, that population edged up again to 819 companies in April, which featured 9 new Challengers, 6 deletions, and 5 promotions. The Near Challengers listing also picked up 7 "NEW" notations (in Appendix B on the Notes tab), keeping the number of Near Challengers at 117, same as last month but still well below the record of 281 companies in September 2014. After March's... Read more