While a rise in interest rates might diminish the attractiveness of dividend stocks, these will still be in demand on optimism surrounding the biggest tax overhaul in decades. This is because lower corporate taxes will boost companies’ profits leading to handsome dividends and in turn lead to outperformance of stocks with a history of year-over-year dividend growth.

Why Dividend Growth?

Stocks that have a strong history of dividend growth belong to mature companies, which are less susceptible to large swings in the market, and thus act as a hedge against economic or political uncertainty. At the same time, these offer downside protection with their consistent increase in payouts.

These stocks have superior fundamentals as opposed to their traditional dividend counterparts such as a sustainable business model, a long track record of profitability, rising cash flows, good liquidity, strong balance sheet and some value characteristics. They have a history of outperformance over the long term but not necessarily high dividend yields. All these make dividend growth a quality and promising investment metric for the long term.

Further, a history of strong dividend growth indicates that dividend increase in the future is likely. This makes the portfolio healthy and safe. Though these stocks have a long history of outperformance compared with the broader stock market or any other dividend paying stock, it does not necessarily mean that they have the highest yields.

As a result, picking dividend growth stocks appear as winning strategies when some other parameters are also included.

5-Year Historical Dividend Growth greater than zero: This selects stocks with a solid dividend growth history.

5-Year Historical Sales Growth greater than zero: This represents stocks with a strong record of growing revenues.

5-Year Historical EPS Growth greater than zero: This represents stocks with a solid earnings growth history.

Next 3–5 Year EPS Growth Rate greater than zero: This represents the rate at which a company’s earnings are expected to grow. Improving earnings should help companies sustain dividend payments.

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