Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Welcome to Investing Insights. I'm your host, Ivana Hampton. A rare group of dividend paying stocks are standing out for their exceptional qualities.

They've racked up five straight years of

dividend growth of 10% or more. And they've passed several rigorous checks. Morningstar's Dividend Investor

newsletter editor, David Harrell, dug into the data. And he's joining the podcast to discuss this

year's class of dividend growers.

Welcome back, David. It's great to be back. Well, you research and compile an annual list of exceptional dividend paying stocks known as dividend growers. What are qualifications?

Sure. So this is a list I put together generally every February and March after we have,

we know the full amount of dividends paid during the previous calendar year. So it's a screen

that I do and has four criteria. First of all, I'm looking for stocks that have increased

their total per share dividend payout for the past five calendar

years of at least 10% in each of those five years. These are stocks that are covered by

Morning Star analysts. So I'm looking for stocks that have either a narrow or wide economic

moat rating and then on their uncertainty rating that

the Morning Star analysts provide either a low or medium uncertainty. And then the last is

they have to be yielding at least 1% to make this list. Are there any caveats? Yeah, some caveats here.

First of all, this is limited to the universe of stocks covered by Morningstar analysts. And that's around 1,500 stocks. So it's a subset of the broader stock universe. So I'm sure there are some, you know, smaller energy and utilities that have increased, you know, 10% a year for five years or more that aren't

going to show up because they're simply not covered by Morning Star. I'm also looking at the

year over year payout and has that increased by 10%. And that might not align with, there might

be a stock that raised its dividend by 10 or 12% in a

year, but because of the timing of the raise, it didn't result in a 10% increase in the total

dollars per share paid out. And I guess, you know, the final sort of caveat is that it's a somewhat

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