Dividend Stocks You Can Rely On

"Dividend Champion" is a term coined by The DRiP Investing Resource Center referring to U.S Companies that have offered AND increased their dividend for a minimum of 25 straight years. A track record like this is incredibly encouraging to investors who know all to well that a company can cancel dividend payments at any time. A consistent payment history is all the more important if the yield is competitively high. With this in mind we screened the 105 dividend champions, whose yields range from 0.78% to 10.4% and pulled the top 20 yielders.

Most dividend investors will say 7% is the benchmark that separates sustainable yields from unsustainable. Anything higher has the potential to drain a firm of much needed revenue used for internal improvements, and can cause management to pull back on payments to shareholders. The list below highlights the highest yielding stocks on the DRiP list: 1. Pitney Bowes Inc. (PBI), 2. Old Republic Int'l (ORI), 3. Mercury General Corp. (MCY), 4. Altria Group Inc. (MO) and 5. AT&T Inc. (T).

Source: Kapitall Wire

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