Skip to main content
number cruncher

What are we looking for?

Number Cruncher's affection for dividends is well documented and today we look back at the decade to find the stocks that offered up the most dividend growth.

Unlike our earlier looks back at earnings and revenue growth this week, we're going to slice the decade a little finer and give you a look at compound annual growth rates across the last 10 years.

More about today's screen

The universe of stocks we're looking at here includes all the stocks traded in Toronto, not just the S&P/TSX composite index.

We're using Capital IQ's market data for the information on dividend per share growth and its stock screener to pull out only those names that managed to post a 10-year compound annual growth rate of better than 15 per cent. The list here is not screening on any of the other data sets, but we'll tell you a little about what you can see if you do that as well.

Share price, yield and market cap data are from Globe Investor.

Bloomberg provided the 10-year share price gains and total return figures.

What did we find?

Sometimes the laws of small numbers can help a few names make a list like this that might otherwise not belong - it's much easier to grow a small number than a large one - but, for the most part, this is a very select group. Out of a total of 1,931 stocks in the universe selected, there were just 33 that made the cut. Teck Resources Ltd. squeaked in because its fiscal year hasn't ended yet.

Many of the names are stalwarts of the dividend crowd - banks, insurers and property firms.

Some of the smaller firms on the list are more of a surprise. Stella-Jones Inc. has been able to turn power poles into a remarkable record of dividend growth. Le Château Inc. has been able to do the same thing with its fashion business.

Even more of a surprise, however, is that if you tighten up the screen criteria even more and look for companies that have posted 15-per-cent compound annual growth in all of the periods we have data for, only 11 companies make the grade and both Stella-Jones and Le Château are still there.

Interact with The Globe