A Top 10 Dividend Growth List

Most yield oriented investors maintain some sort of watch list for possible purchase candidates to add to their portfolio. I maintain one but also screen larger databases in search of new ideas or perhaps a security I missed. I decided to run a screen searching for top dividend growers. I screened by using the following criteria: Current yield in excess of 2.5%. Payout ratio less than 60%. Five year dividend growth rate over 10%. Excluding utilities, MLP's, REIT's, and foreign securities. The securities that survived the screen were: Abbott Labs (ABT) Automatic Data (ADP) Colgate-Palmolive (CL) Clorox (CLX) Flowers Foods (FLO) General Dynamics (GD) McDonald's (MCD) Northrop Grumman (NOC) Pepsico (PEP) Procter & Gamble (PG) Target (TGT) Wal-Mart (WMT) I was surprised when the screen run was completed due to the absence of several securities. There was no Coca-Cola (KO) or Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), as both failed to achieve... Read more