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 UPS (NYS: UPS) .

With its U-P-S name -- and ticker symbol -- no one should be surprised when the parcel delivery giant "ups" its dividend. UPS is boosting its quarterly disbursements by nearly 10% to $0.57 a share. UPS has more than doubled its rate since 2004, and more than tripled its rate since 1999.

Harley-Davidson (NYS: HOG) is also revving up. The leading motorcycle maker is improving its payouts by 24%. Harley-Davidson shareholders will now be receiving $0.155 a share every three months. The move pushes the stock's yield to 1.3%.

3M (NYS: MMM) is keeping its impressive dividend streaking going. Investors may want to scribble on a Post-it that 3M's new quarterly distributions of $0.59 a share is 7% ahead of its previous rate. More importantly, 3M has now jacked up its payouts for 54 consecutive years.

Finally, we have Western Union (NYS: WU) showing investors the money. The global payment services behemoth is giving its quarterly disbursements a 25% upgrade to $0.10 a share. It's not the only way that Western Union is returning money to its shareowners. The company also repurchased $800 million worth of stock last year.

Checks and balances
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 My Watchlist.

At the time thisarticle was published The Motley Fool owns shares of United Parcel Service. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Western Union and 3M; creating a write covered straddle position in Western Union; and creating a diagonal call position in 3M. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz calls them as he sees them. He does not own shares in any of the stocks in this story. Rick is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.

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