Dividend Increases, Jun/Jul 2013

Once every month I update my watch list of dividend growth stocks to reflect current yields. Current yields rise when dividends increase or when prices decrease. Conversely, current yields fall when dividends fall or prices increase. 

When stocks in my watch list decrease their dividend payments, I generally remove them from my watch list. I'm not really interested in tracking stocks that decrease their dividends. This blog is about dividend growth stocks, not dividend shrink stocks!

I've removed the following stocks from my watch list due to recent dividend decreases: DCM, LINE, and MTGE. 

The following table provides a summary of recent dividend increases for stocks in my watch list, sorted by the last column, %Increase. Dividend amounts are annualized. 

Dividend Increases: Jun 15 - Jul 15, 2013

Company	Ticker	Price (Jul 14)	Previous Dividend	New Dividend	Current Yield	%Increase
Cummins Inc.	CMI	117.29	2.00	2.50	2.13%	+25.00
Walgreen Company	WAG	49.27	1.10	1.26	2.56%	+14.55
The J.M. Smucker Company	SJM	106.66	2.08	2.32	2.18%	+11.54
Darden Restaurants, Inc.	DRI	51.15	2.00	2.20	4.30%	+10.00
Baxter International Inc.	BAX	72.68	1.80	1.96	2.70%	+8.89
Medtronic, Inc.	MED	53.69	1.04	1.12	2.09%	+7.69
ConocoPhillips	COP	64.57	2.64	2.76	4.27%	+4.55
National Retail Properties	NNN	37.36	1.58	1.62	4.34%	+2.53
Duke Energy Corp	DUK	71.01	3.06	3.12	4.39%	+1.96
Reality Income Crop	O	45.19	2.17	2.18	4.82%	+0.17
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp	NTT	26.58	0.97	0.82	3.08%	-15.66

Highlighted in the table is are COP and NTT, stocks in DivGro. 

COP's 4.55% dividend increase is the 13^th consecutive annual dividend increase authorized by the board of ConocoPhillips. The next quarterly dividend of 69 cents per share will be payed on September 3, to shareholders of record on July 18.

Notice that NTT decreased its dividend payment. It pays dividends semi-annually and has a pattern of paying a smaller dividend in the first half of the year, followed by a larger dividend in the second half of the year. I'll decide later this year if I want to continue to be invested in NTT. My decision would depend on NTT's second dividend payment...

Full Disclosure: Long COP, NTT