Dividend Announcement Thread!

[Dividend Watcher]

I agree. It's not just the consumer staples. Home Depot (1.3%) and Lowe's (4.3%) both were disappointing the last couple years. Hershey was much lower than usual and also a year late (frozen for 2 years, IIRC). ABBV (5.5%) and AMGN (2.9%) also were much lower than in the past. Deere hasn't increased since Feb 2025. United Healthcare only raised about 5% in 6/25 and they haven't announced 2026 yet -- I'm not hopeful in the current environment.

I think it's due to a multiple of factors:

• higher interest rates than the last 6 or 7 years (at least)
  
• uncertainty and confusion on tariffs (and retaliations)
  
• uncertainty on inflation
  
• deporting  ~3% of your population takes a bite out of consumer spending, especially on essentials
  
• and now ... the gas pricing problems may contribute in the near term
  
• of course, just about all companies face a 2-3 year slump at some point in their lifetime
  

Except in certain sectors and really high quality companies, I'm guessing 2.5-5% raises are going to be the norm for a while yet. At least it's keeping up with inflation. I'm staying the course but am doing a little re-arranging. Now that I'm retired, I'm slimming down some of my very low yield (<1.5%) companies and moving some to the higher yielding (>3.25%) companies that are still raising on a regular basis.

ADP is still sticking to its 10%ish range for now and the current dividend rate is the highest in years. 

I'm waiting to see MSFT's announcement later in the year to see if their sticking to their 8-10% usual raise. 

Surprisingly, Cummins (CMI) has been doing some nice increases for a few years despite their headwinds. 

I would also look at Accenture (ACN). (Spreadsheet coming soon.) Yield highest it's been in a while (like ADP). To me, their only issue is Schwab won't let you do dividend reinvesting on foreign stocks. ACN is an Irish company.