Slow Dividend Growth To Dominate 9 Early April Announcements

There were only a few long-term dividend growth companies that announced their annual increases in March. Among the more notable were Colgate-Palmolive and Ross Stores.
Utilities Southern Company and American Water Works are among the nine companies expected to announce dividend boosts in the first half of April.
Hanging over the market, of course, is the pandemic-driven economic slowdown. In response, I’ve reduced and widened the range of my predictions.
This article is the latest in my series of articles where I provide my predictions of annual dividend increases for a variety of long-term dividend growth companies. Since providing my predictions at the end of February, the investing world has been turned on its head, with the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic driving stocks into its first major bear market since the 2008 – 2009 financial crisis.
Ordinarily, I use companies’ historical dividend payments, along with past earnings and guidance on future earnings and information on corporate debt levels to estimate what I think a company’s next dividend increase will be. However, with the “social distancing” that’s been implemented across the country, many companies have withdrawn past earnings guidance or simply have no idea what to expect in the coming months. As I write this, it isn’t even clear how long the various lockdowns across the country will last. To account for this, I’ve generally reduced my predictions (while still trying to maintain some optimism), and widened the range of the expected dividend boosts.
Before I offer my predictions for announcements of dividend increases from nine companies in the first half of April , here are how my predictions for March came out (you can see the original article with my predictions here):
(All yields are based on stock prices at the market close on Friday, March 27th.)
Results for the Five Dividend Increase Predictions from March
Colgate-Palmolive (CL)
Prediction: 2.3 – 3.5%... Read more