27 Dividend Increases: February 12-16, 2018 (Part 1: Industrials And Information Technology Stocks)

I like monitoring dividend increases for stocks on my watch list of dividend growth stocks because I consider such stocks to be candidates for further analysis. Companies that regularly raise their dividend payments show confidence in future earnings growth potential.
I use the following screens to compile a watch list from the CCC stocks:
Market cap ≥ $500 million No stocks that are being acquired. No over-the-counter or Pink Sheet stocks. Dividend Yield ≥ 2% for Challengers Dividend Yield ≥ 1.5% for Contenders and Champions In the past week, 27 companies on my watch list decided to increase their dividends, including four of the stocks I hold in my portfolio. The table below provides a summary of dividend increases announced by stocks in the Industrials and Information Technology sectors. Part 2 will cover dividend increases from stocks in the Financials, Consumer Discretionary, and Real Estate sectors, while Part 3 will cover the remaining sectors.
The table is sorted by the percentage increase, %Incr. Dividends are annualized and in US$, unless otherwise indicated. Yield is the new dividend yield for the market close Price on the date listed. Yrs are years of consecutive dividend increases, while 5-yr DGR is the compound annual growth rate of the dividend over a 5-year period. 1-yr %Incr is the percentage increase from the year-ago dividend. (Some companies increase their dividends more than once a year, so this puts the most recent dividend increase in... Read more