A dividend champion is a company which has a 25 year record of annual dividend increases. There are only 134 such companies in the US today. I believe that becoming a dividend champion is no accident, and it is a result of a strong business that has generated earnings growth for a long period of time. These are the types of businesses I like to study, and potentially consider at the right time for my dividend portfolio. I believe that the dividend champions list offers a more complete picture than the dividend aristocrats.

I last updated the list of dividend champions through December 31, 2018. I decided to update the list of dividend champions after the untimely passing of David Fish in May 2018. 

Today, I am going to share with you the Dividend Champions list for 2020. You can download the 2020 Dividend Champions List from this link.

As a starting point, there were 129 companies in the dividend champions list at the end of 2019. 

There were several companies that ended up leaving the Dividend Champions list in 2019. 

Three of these companies were acquired – notably Vectren (59), Connecticut Water Service (48) and Bemis (35). The number in brackets is the number of years of annual dividend increases for each of those three companies.

There were eight companies that were added to the list in 2019. 

Albermarle (ALB)
Caterpillar (CAT) 
Enterprise Bancorp (EBTC) 
Essex Property Trust (ESS)
Matthews International (MATW) 
Northeast Indiana Bancorp (NIDB)
Realty Income (O)
Ross Stores (ROST)

All of this brings the list of dividend champions to 134 companies at the end of 2019.

The following companies should be able to become dividend champions by the end of 2020:

International Business Machines (IBM)
Lincoln Electric Holdings (LECO)
NextEra Energy (NEE)
Polaris Industries (PII)
RenaissanceRe Holdings (RNR)
Southside Bancshares (SBSI)

There are a few companies such as Helmerich & Payne (HP), whose annual dividends are increasing in 2019, despite not having a dividend hike since 2018. If the dividend is kept unchanged, chances are the company will lose its dividend champion status.

Thank you for reading!