36 Dividend Increases: April 23-27, 2018 (Part 1: Energy And Utilities Sectors)

Companies can only raise their dividends regularly if earnings grow sufficiently. I monitor dividend increases for stocks on my watch list of dividend growth stocks to identify candidates for further analysis.

This week, 36 companies on my watch list declared dividend increases, including four of the stocks I own. Part 1 presents dividend increases for stocks in the Energy and Utilities Sectors. Part 2 will cover Financials Sector stocks, while Part 3 will cover the remaining sectors.

None of the stocks in the Energy and Utilities sectors announced double-digit percentage increases, but several have year over year increases of more than 10% because they've announced dividend increases more than once in the past year.

The top increase is from Portland General Electric (POR), a vertically integrated electric utility engaged in the generation, purchase, transmission, distribution, and retail sale of electricity. POR announced an increase of 6.6% and the stock now yields 3.43% at $42.33 per share.

The runner-up is one of the stocks I own, ExxonMobil (XOM). The company announced a dividend increase of 6.5% and now yields 4.22% at $77.79 per share.

To see details of last week's dividend increases announced by stocks in the Real Estate and Financials sectors, please read this article at Seeking Alpha. I include three F.A.S.T. Graphs to illustrate the impressive earnings and dividend growth rates of some of these stocks.

As a bonus, I'm including a summary of ex-dividend dates for the next two weeks. Scan the list of stocks to see if there's a stock you want to pick up before the ex-dividend date so you can grab the next dividend.

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