How to Build Wealth with Dividend Aristocrats (Excel Spreadsheet)

Dividend Aristocrats are high quality, blue chip stocks that have not only paid dividends for 25 consecutive years; but also grown them every year.

As a result of their long term track records, these stocks are a core holding in the S&P 500. They have healthy balance sheets, sell products that are household brands, and have superb managements with strong recurring and growing revenues, earnings and credit ratings.

Quote on quote, the aristocrats are some of the best dividend growth stocks in the US. They have survived various economic cycles including the technology bubble of 2000 as well as the 2008 great financial crisis.

Prerequisites to be a Dividend Aristocrat stock are:

• Member of the S&P 500 Index.
• Market capitalization of at least $3 billion.
• Grown dividends continuously for minimum 25 years.

Table of Contents

This article is broken down in to sections, feel free to jump to the area that interests you.

• List of Dividend Aristocrat Stocks for 2020
• Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Download
• How to Use Excel Spreadsheet of Dividend Aristocrats
• Long Term Performance
• How to Invest in Dividend Aristocrats Including Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

Spreadsheet Download of Dividend Aristocrats

Readers can download a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet with a listing of all dividend aristocrat stocks. It contains useful information such as the dividend yield, market capitalization of each stock, price to earnings ratio, annual revenues, Beta and # of years of dividend increases.

Dividend Yield – It can be sorted and filtered for specific criteria, e.g. all stocks with a dividend yield greater than 3%.

2018 Revenues – Gives an idea of how large the company is and revenue figures can be compared to prior years.

Payout Ratio – Can be sorted and filtered by specific conditions e.g. all stocks with a payout ratio less than 50%.

Price to Earnings (PE) Ratio – PE ratio determines how expensive a stock is trading related to earnings. Warren Buffet recommends buying stocks that trade below PE ratio of 12 to 13.

Market Capitalization – List can be filtered to show e.g. all stocks with a market cap greater than $10 billion.

Beta – Beta measures volatility or risk of a particular stock. Higher beta is associated with a greater risk and superior returns relative to the market. A lower beta is less risky and henceforth lower returns than the overall market. In this file, readers can sort by Beta to only show stocks with a Beta of less than 1.

Liquidity – File shows average 3 month trading volume in millions.

How to Use Excel File of Dividend Aristocrats

Learn how to sort, filter and analyze this list using steps here:

Step #1: Download Excel file (once you click on the download link), the file will be automatically saved to ‘Downloads’ folder.

Step #2: Highlight all the rows from 1 to 58.

Step #3: On the top ribbon, select ‘Data’ tab and click ‘Sort.’

Step #4: In Sort By, select the field you want to sort by such as market capitalization, dividend yield, beta, etc.

Step #5: In Sort On, click Values.

Step #6: In Order, select to sort from largest to smallest or smallest to largest.

List of Dividend Aristocrats Stocks for 2020

This article is updated on February 3rd, 2020 as a result of a news release from the S&P Dow Jones Indices announcing which stocks qualify to be included in the Dividend Aristocrats Index for 2020.

There are now 64 dividend aristocrat stocks for 2020, versus 57 for 2019. Attached is list of all dividend aristocrat stocks and how many years they have consecutively raised their dividends, sorted by descending order.

Name	Years of Dividend Raises
Dover	64
Procter & Gamble	64
Emerson	63
Genuine Parts	63
3M	61
Cincinnati Financial	59
Coca Cola	57
Johnson and Johnson	57
Colgate-Palmolive	56
Lowe’s	56
Hormel Foods	53
Federal Realty	52
Stanley Black Decker	52
Target	52
Sysco	50
Abbott Labs	48
Leggett & Platt	48
WW Grainger	48
AbbVie	47
Becton Dickinson	47
Kimberly Clark	47
PepsiCo	47
PPG Industries	47
VF Corp.	47
Consolidated Edison	46
Nucor	46
S&P Global	46
Walmart	46
ADP	45
Illinois Tool Works	45
Archer-Daniels-Midland	44
Pentair	43
Clorox	42
Medtronic	42
McDonald’s	40
Sherwin-Williams	40
Aflac	37
Air Products	37
Franklin Resources	37
Exxon Mobil	36
AT&T	35
Brown Forman	35
Cintas	35
Cardinal Health	34
McCormick & Co.	33
Chevron	32
T Rowe	32
Walgreens Boots Alliance	30
Ecolab	27
General Dynamics	27
People’s United Financial	27
Roper Technologies	27
AO Smith	26
Chubb	26
Linde PLC	26
Caterpillar	25
United Technologies	25
Amcor Plc	25
Atmos Energy	25
Realty Income Corp	25
Essex Property Trust	25
Ross Stores Inc.	25
Albemarle Corp	25
Expeditors Intl. of WA Inc.	25

 

Performance of S&P Dividend Aristocrats

Dividend Aristocrats are the best game in town when it comes to long term investing success. In the last decade, the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Total Return (includes price gains + dividend income) has yielded 14.51% annual average returns.

This is almost 120 basis points better than the S&P 500 index which returned 13.3% annual average gains in last decade.

Source: S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats

How to Invest in Dividend Aristocrats Stocks

For most investors, maintaining 57 stocks can get too costly and time consuming. Fortunately, there is an exchange traded fund (ETF) that solves this problem.

The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF with ticker symbol NOBL tracks the performance of the aristocrat stocks. Its cost as measured by expense ratio is quite reasonable at just 0.35%. In addition, liquidity is not an issue as this fund has $5.51 billion in managed assets.

According to its fact sheet, a $10,000 investment in NOBL at the date of inception would be worth $20,119 as of September 2019 versus $20,317 if invested directly in the S&P 500.

Please note that the S&P 500 performance does not include trading costs, while NOBL has an expense of 0.35%.

In percent terms, 5 year average annual return on the S&P 500 is 10.83% while NOBL ETF has gained 11.33% including costs. The S&P Dividend Aristocrats Index itself without costs has 11.8% annualized gains.