Dividend Aristocrats Performance: February 2019

• The Dividend Aristocrats are companies of the S&P 500 that have paid steadily increasing dividends for at least 25 years have outperformed the broader market over time, like in 2018.
• This article lists the current Dividend Aristocrat constituents and their recent returns including the month February 2019. The 4 new dividend aristocrats, added to the list by S&P, are also included.
• By showing the recent performance of the Dividend Aristocrats, some active dividend growth investors may be able to identify relative bargains.

The Dividend Aristocrats started the first month of the year 2019, with a positive performance, recovering somewhat from the negative performance last December. The Dividend Aristocrats index total return is 10.51% year-to-date. This is below the total return of the benchmark S&P 500-index, the S&P 500 (SPY) is up 12.26% in 2019.

Traditionally, the out-performance by the Dividend Aristocrats has occurred in down markets, like last year. So, the under-performance of is not a surprise.

 

Four New Dividend Aristocrats

On January 24th, 2019, S&P Dow Jones indices announced that Chubb (CB), Caterpillar (CAT), People’s United Financial (PBCT), and United Technologies (UTX) were added to the Dividend Aristocrats Index. These changes will be effective prior to the open on February 1st 2019. As from February the Dividend Aristocrats will have 57 constituents.

All four are meeting the criteria to become a member of the dividend aristocrats list, include the 25+ consecutive years of dividend increases.

The table below shows in performance of the four new dividend aristocrats sorted descending by last month’s performance.

Details performance February 2019

The table below lists all 57 constituents, including the 4 new aristocrats sorted descending by last month’s performance and lists returns over last month, 3-, 6-, and 12-month periods.

The top performers in February were Roper Technologies (+14%) and Leggett & Platt Incorporated (+11%), Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (-5.35%) and Coca-Cola (-5.80%) were down.

AbbVie’s share price has already spent much of 2018 falling and continued further down in the first two months in 2019.

However given Abbvie’s long-term plan and drugs pipeline, the sell-off by investors looks a bit overdone. AbbVie is one of the undervalued Dividend Aristocrats and has also an interesting 5.34% dividend yield.

Year-to-date only AbbVie, Walgreens Boots (WBA) and Coca-Cola are below the closing prices of last year.

Dividends and Dividend Yield

Next to dividend growth investing, high yield dividend could also be an approach. The table below lists the top-10 Dividend Aristocrats sorted descending by current dividend yield.

Please note that selected high yield Dividend Aristocrats is historically not a way to outperform the S&P 500. Back-testing of the Dogs of the Dividend Aristocrats over the past years resulted in an under-performance with respect to the S&P 500 index.

The above presented performance data of the Dividend Aristocrats, could assist active dividend growth investors to find some bargains for the long run.