Tuesday, December 23, 2008

S&P Announces 2009 Aristocrats

Standard & Poor's recently announced the companies that will comprise the Dividend Aristocrats for 2009. The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats are companies in the S&P 500 index that have followed a policy of consistently increasing dividends every year for at least 25 consecutive years. The 2009 Aristocrats total 52 companies for 2009 versus 60 companies for the 2008 Aristocrats. The list of 2009 Aristocrats is detailed below.


The new companies added to the Aristocrats list are:
  • Bemis (BMS)
  • Legg Mason (LM)
The companies that have been eliminated from the Aristocrat group are primarily centered in the financial sector. The companies eliminated are:
  • Anheuser Busch (BUD)-acquired
  • Bank of America (BAC)
  • Comerica (CMA)
  • Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB)
  • KeyCorp (KEY)
  • Nucor Corp. (NUE)
  • Progressive Corp. (PGR)
  • Regions Financial (RF)
  • Synovus (SNV)
  • Wm. Wrigley (WWY)-acquired
Source:

S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats (PDF)
Standard & Poor's
By: Aye M. Soe & David Guarino
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/SP500_Aristocrats_Paper_2008Dec.pdf


4 comments :

Anonymous said...

Dividents can't be overlooked when considering your investment strategy. Without dividends ones total return in a stock portfolio would be significantly less.

Of course, in a normal taxable account, dividends are taxable. One might consider asking their professional investment advisor if higher dividend investments should go into tax deferred or tax priveledged accounts.

Anonymous said...

David: Do you know why NUE was removed? When you strip out special dividends over the years, NUE's dividends have increased for 35 years.

Best Wishes,
D4L

David Templeton, CFA said...

D4L,

I am not sure why but it must be because of the practice surrounding the special dividend. Also, not sure why GPC is not on the list; however, I think GPC paid an extra dividend on 7/1/86 of .06814818.

If S&P is simply looking at the data then it would look as though the company does not have a 25 year dividend increase history. I would hope they review the data carefully and not take some of the results at face value.

David

Anonymous said...

David,

Thanks a lot for the update. Actually there are over 130 US traded stocks out there which have increased their dividends for over 25 consecutive years - aka the Dividend Champions. Other than excluding stocks which have a smaller trading volume, I don't see why they would omit 70 stocks from the aristocrats list..