S&P Dow Jones Indices has added Erie Indemnity (ERIE), Eversource Energy (ES), and FactSet (FDS) to the prestigious S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat List during its annual rebalancing for the year 2025.
The Dividend Aristocrat list represents the gold standard of publicly-traded companies for many Dividend Growth Investing practitioners in the United States.
To become a member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat list, a stock must fulfill a handful of requirements. The two most important are that the stock must currently be part of the S&P 500 index and that it has increased its dividends for at least the last 25 consecutive years.
The list goes through changes over time as some companies are removed due to buyouts, dividend cuts, dividend halts, etc. Meanwhile, many stocks are added to the list over time when they hit their 25th year of increases, or in the case of medium-sized businesses that already have a quarter century of hikes, they might become eligible when added officially to the S&P 500 index. Other unique decisions need to be made when spin-offs occur to determine Aristocrat eligibility on a case-by-case basis. A committee at Standard and Poor’s is responsible for adding and deleting companies from the Aristocrat list and they generally make that rebalancing announcement towards the end of January each year.
Here are the stock ticker symbols of the current list:
ABBV, ABT, ADM, ADP, AFL, ALB, AMCR, AOS, APD, ATO, BDX, BEN, BF/B, BRO, CAH, CAT, CB, CHD, CHRW, CINF, CL, CLX, CTAS, CVX, DOV, ECL, ED, EMR, ERIE, ES, ESS, EXPD, FAST, FDS, FRT, GD, GPC, GWW, HRL, IBM, ITW, JNJ, KMB, KO, KVUE, LIN, LOW, MCD, MDT, MKC, MMM, NDSN, NEE, NUE, O, PEP, PG, PNR, PPG, ROP, SHW, SJM, SPGI, SWK, SYY, TGT, TROW, WMT, WST, XOM
All eleven sectors are featured in the current list, with Consumer Staples and Industrials representing the largest weightings. Here is the approximate sector break-down of the Dividend Aristocrats (as of 12/31/24):
To stay up-to-date on companies that are announcing dividend raises throughout the year, be sure to visit https://www.marketscholars.com/category/dividend-growth-investing/
For those interested in a weekly class that strives to select high quality dividend growth stocks at attractive prices, please attend my 11:00 am ET Dividend Growth Investing class for premium Market Scholars every Tuesday. A full calendar of our classes can be found here: https://www.marketscholars.com/events/
Never stop learning,
Brandon Van Zee
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