5 stocks with dividend growth of at least five years
A series of uninterrupted dividend growth is one of the few indicators that cannot be inflated by accounting creativity or easily imitated. Either a company raised its payout, or it didn't. We looked at five global companies that passed this filter and verified what truly lies behind their streaks and whether they will continue.
Dividend yield tempts investors into mistakes. A high yield often simply means the stock has fallen sharply and the market does not consider the payout sustainable. Dividend growth says something different: the board considers the current level of earnings and cash stable enough to commit to a higher payout in the coming years. A cut, on the other hand, is costly for management because the market punishes it with a sell-off and takes it as an admission that something has broken.
Key points
Dividend growth can be far more important than its current yield. We broke down why the highest dividend may not automatically be the best and where the greatest room for further growth lies.
Common screeners can show misleading numbers for dividend stocks. For some names, currencies, spin-offs or accounting items can create growth of over 1,000% or, conversely, hide a real streak of increases.
An accounting loss does not mean the dividend is at risk. At some companies, classic metrics look catastrophic due to one-time items, while cash flow tells a different story.
None of the five stocks offers both a high dividend yield and rapid payout growth. The analysis shows what compromise an investor actually makes with each individual dividend strategy.
In 2026, this discipline carries even greater weight than before. Capital is more expensive and investors have stopped rewarding companies merely for revenue growth pace. The ability to generate free cash flow and distribute it without limiting business investments has come to the fore. The payout ratio has therefore become a key metric.
The filter itself, however, is a crude tool. It works reasonably well for American companies because they pay quarterly and in dollars. For European and Japanese names traded as ADRs, data gets distorted by exchange rate movements, withholding taxes and one-time payouts that shift or completely break the whole series. In the following overview we distinguish these cases, because that is where the difference arises between what a screener shows and what an investor actually receives in their account.