2021

Dividend

Aristocrats

List

ALL 65 STOCKS

Income investors often turn to bonds for yield, but with interest rates so low for so long, the stock market can sometimes be a better option, with many stocks offering better payoffs than a 10-year Treasury, which pays less than 2%.

But dividend yields themselves don't mean much if they aren't sustainable. That's why being a member of the dividend aristocrats is such a distinction: There are 65 members of the S&P 500 that haven't just paid dividends for at least 25 consecutive years – they've raised their dividends for a minimum of 25 straight years.

Just the two requirements that a stock must be a member of the vaunted S&P 500 (.SPX) and that it has a record of 25 years' worth of dividend increases alone are stringent enough screens to guarantee investors are looking at a list of strong, reliable companies.

But the requirements go even further, with the following attributes also mandatory for membership on the dividend aristocrats list:

Companies must be worth at least $3 billion at the time of each quarterly S&P 500 rebalancing.

Average daily volume of at least $5 million in transactions for every trailing three-month period at every quarterly rebalancing date.

The rebalancing of the index happens every January, April, July and October. New entrants are added and old ones removed once a year. It's important to keep in mind the goal of the index when looking it over: It's constructed to be a well-diversified, lower-volatility group of stocks boasting both dividend income and capital appreciation potential. S&P Dow Jones Indices, the index owner, notes that almost one-third of total equity market returns since 1926 have come from dividends and that its selection criteria and diversification requirements make the dividend aristocrat stocks uniquely positioned to do well as a group.

On the issue of diversification, the index has a minimum floor on membership at 40 companies – a level in no danger of being breached anytime soon, given that the current group consists of 65 stocks.

The index also caps the weighting of any single sector at 30%, limiting the impact of any single sector's hit on the broader portfolio.

To that end, while investors could certainly try to adopt their own "smart beta" strategies to eliminate the less alluring members of the group, it's a much lower-effort endeavor to simply buy the entire group as a whole, which is possible due to the existence of dividend aristocrats exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, that track the portfolio. The ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL) is the premier exchange-traded fund in the space, with more than $8 billion in assets under management and a reasonable expense ratio of 0.35%.

Here's a full list of all 65 S&P 500 dividend aristocrats

Here's a full list of all 65 S&P 500 dividend aristocrats

and how long each has been increasing its payouts to shareholders. The list is current through October 2021.

YEARS OF DIVIDEND GROWTH

DIVIDEND YIELD

COMPANY

SECTOR

(AS OF OCT. 29)

63

3.3%

Industrials

3M Co. (MMM)

28

1.5%

Industrials

A.O. Smith Co. (AOS)

Health care

49

1.4%

Abbott Laboratories (ABT)

Health care

49

4.5%

AbbVie Inc. (ABBV)

38

2.5%

Financials

Aflac Inc. (AFL)

Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (APD)

Materials

39

2.0%

27

0.6%

Materials

Albemarle Corp. (ALB)

38

3.9%

Materials

Amcor PLC (AMCR)

Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM)

Consumer staples

47

2.3%

Communications services

36

8.2%

AT&T Inc. (T)

34

2.7%

Utilities

Atmos Energy Corp. (ATO)

Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP)

Information technology

46

1.7%

Becton, Dickinson & Co. (BDX)

Health care

49

1.4%

Consumer staples

Brown-Forman Corp. (BF-B)

37

1.1%

Health care

34

4.1%

Cardinal Health Inc. (CAH)

27

2.2%

Caterpillar Inc. (CAT)

Industrials

34

4.7%

Energy

Chevron Corp. (CVX)

Chubb Ltd. (CB)

Financials

28

1.6%

Cincinnati Financial Corp. (CINF)

61

2.1%

Financials

37

0.9%

Industrials

Cintas Corp. (CTAS)

Consumer staples

45

2.9%

The Clorox Co. (CLX)

The Coca-Cola Co. (KO)

Consumer staples

59

3.0%

Consumer staples

59

2.4%

Colgate-Palmolive Co. (CL)

Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED)

47

4.1%

Utilities

65

1.2%

Industrials

Dover Corp. (DOV)

29

0.9%

Materials

Ecolab Inc. (ECL)

Emerson Electric Co. (EMR)

59

2.1%

Industrials

Essex Property Trust Inc. (ESS)

Real estate

27

2.5%

Expeditors International of Washington Inc. (EXPD)

27

0.9%

Industrials

ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM)

Energy

37

5.5%

Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRT)

49

3.6%

Materials

Franklin Resources Inc. (BEN)

40

3.6%

Financials

General Dynamics Corp. (GD)

Industrials

30

2.3%

Consumer discretionary

65

2.4%

Genuine Parts Co. (GPC)

Consumer staples

55

2.3%

Hormel Foods Corp. (HRL)

Illinois Tool Works Inc. (ITW)

Industrials

50

2.1%

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)

Information technology

25

5.2%

Health care

59

2.6%

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Consumer staples

Kimberly-Clark Corp. (KMB)

48

3.5%

Consumer discretionary

50

3.6%

Leggett & Platt Inc. (LEG)

28

1.3%

Linde PLC (LIN)

Materials

Lowe's Companies Inc. (LOW)

Consumer discretionary

47

1.4%

Consumer staples

McCormick & Co. (MKC)

35

1.7%

McDonald's Corp. (MCD)

Consumer discretionary

44

2.3%

Health care

43

2.1%

Medtronic PLC (MDT)

25

1.8%

NextEra Energy Inc. (NEE)

Utilities

48

1.5%

Nucor Corp. (NUE)

Materials

44

1.1%

Pentair PLC (PNR)

Industrials

People's United Financial Inc. (PBCT)

28

4.3%

Financials

Consumer staples

48

2.7%

PepsiCo Inc. (PEP)

49

1.5%

PPG Industries Inc. (PPG)

Materials

The Procter & Gamble Co. (PG)

Consumer staples

65

2.4%

Realty Income Corp. (O)

Real estate

26

4.0%

Roper Technologies Inc. (ROP)

Industrials

28

0.5%

48

0.7%

S&P Global Inc. (SPGI)

Financials

Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW)

42

0.7%

Materials

Stanley Black & Decker Inc. (SWK)

53

1.8%

Industrials

Consumer staples

Sysco Corp. (SYY)

41

2.4%

T. Rowe Price Group Inc. (TROW)

Financials

35

2.0%

Consumer discretionary

Target Corp. (TGT)

49

1.4%

Consumer discretionary

49

2.7%

VF Corp. (VFC)

50

1.4%

W.W. Grainger Inc. (GWW)

Industrials

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (WBA)

Consumer staples

45

4.1%

Consumer staples

48

1.5%

Walmart Inc. (WMT)

West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. (WST)

Health care

28

0.2%

Recent Additions and Subtractions

Although the total number of dividend aristocrats remained stagnant at 65 between 2020 and 2021, there are actually three new members of the index over the last year or so and three stocks that were removed.

Here are the three newest dividend aristocrats:

Loaded: 0%
Current Time 0:00
Duration 0:12
Remaining Time 0:12
 
1x

1

IBM. The old-school tech giant clocked its 25th straight year of dividend increases last year, making Big Blue a proud new member of the elite club. Although things have been slowly improving for IBM shareholders over the last year, some critics actually fault IBM for focusing more on dividends than long-term, bold investments in innovation. IBM has been an extremely underwhelming performer for more than a decade, with shares having gained no ground since 2010.

NEXT

And because all things must come to an end,

here are the three stocks making their way out of the index:

Loaded: 0%
Current Time 0:00
Duration 0:19
Remaining Time 0:19
 
1x

1

Carrier Global Corp. (CARR). It's no coincidence that these three particular companies just lost their status as dividend aristocrats: They're all the result of a 2020 merger between United Technologies and Raytheon that created the newly formed aerospace and defense giant Raytheon Technologies. Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration company Carrier Global was spun off from United Technologies in preparation for the merger and began trading as a stand-alone stock in 2020.

NEXT

Powered by Ceros