4 Dividend Stocks Showing You the Money

Rick Aristotle Munarriz, The Motley Fool
Updated

Dividend checks continue to get fatter in Corporate America, as more companies jack up their distribution rates.

Readers of the Income Investor newsletter can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at some of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.

Let's start with McCormick (NYS: MKC) .

The spice rack staple is sprinkling some more flavor into its dividend, boosting its quarterly distributions by 11% to $0.31 a share. Shareholders should be used to this by now. McCormick has now bumped up its yield for 26 consecutive years.

If you think that's impressive, Becton, Dickinson (NYS: BDX) pushed its streak of annual hikes up to 40 years with last week's move. The global medical technology company's new quarterly rate of $0.45 a share is a 10% improvement.

South Jersey Industries (NYS: SJI) is also on the move. The energy services provider is juicing up its quarterly payouts by 10% to $0.4025 a share. South Jersey's string of annual hikes is now at 13 years. It's half as long as McCormick's run -- and less than a third as long as BD's impressive streak -- but you have to start somewhere.

Finally we have United Bankshares (NAS: UBSI) generating interest. The regional banker's new quarterly dividend of $0.31 a share is just a 3% upgrade, but it now extends its streak of annual increases to an impressive 38 years. You're obviously not seeing that with most of the "too big to fail" banks.

These companies join Spam cannery Hormel Foods (NYS: HRL) and candle and salad dressing maker Lancaster Colony (NAS: LANC) in recently jacking up their yields.

Subscribers to the Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending more and more money to their investors. The newsletter singles out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.

Want to see what is being recommended these days? Go ahead and give the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing that will get hiked will be your interest.

If you want to track these stocks to see if and when they hike their payouts again, consider adding them to MyWatchlist.

At the time thisarticle was published Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended buying shares of South Jersey Industries, Becton, Dickinson, and McCormick. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.

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