12 Dividend Stocks You Can Buy and Hold Forever

Members of Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index that have raised cash payments to stockholders 25 years in a row are known as dividend aristocrats.

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Members of Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index that have raised cash payments to stockholders 25 years in a row are known as dividend aristocrats. The title dividend champions goes to U.S. stocks, regardless of size, with 25 consecutive increases. There are 105 champions, a handful of which are working to extend more than 60 years of increases. But some U.S. businesses have been doling out cash to public stockholders for longer than six decades. Much longer, in fact. So Kiplinger now presents the dividend centenarians.

We identified a dozen investments that have paid cash dividends annually for at least a century. That’s not to say they’ve granted raises every year for 100 years. But some have never cut their dividend. Most of these companies have humble, workshop-floor origins, but they are not quaint. Most have evolved over their long histories into enormous, multifaceted, worldwide enterprises, providing great growth as well as dividends. Take a look at this intriguing list of income stocks. Some of the names might surprise you.

Disclaimer

Stocks are listed in order of the year when each company paid its initial dividend, starting with the oldest. Current yields are based on the latest dividend, and share prices are as of May 25. Analysts' stock ratings provided by Thomson Reuters. Research assistance to identify the companies paying dividends for 100 years or more provided by Dividend.com.

Jeffrey R. Kosnett
Senior Editor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Kosnett is the editor of Kiplinger's Investing for Income and writes the "Cash in Hand" column for Kiplinger's Personal Finance. He is an income-investing expert who covers bonds, real estate investment trusts, oil and gas income deals, dividend stocks and anything else that pays interest and dividends. He joined Kiplinger in 1981 after six years in newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun. He is a 1976 journalism graduate from the Medill School at Northwestern University and completed an executive program at the Carnegie-Mellon University business school in 1978.