Dividend Growth vs Dividend Yield in the long run

As an individual investor and blogger I do what I preach. I have a dividend portfolio which consists of almost 40 individual issues, most of them dividend achievers or aristocrats. I often get criticized by readers for writing about stocks which many seem to have a low current yield, despite having a history of increasing in dividends. Those readers believe that finding a high yielding stock is the best income play for the long term. In other words stocks that pay over 8% but do not raise distributions are viewed favorably than stocks which currently yield 2%-3%, but grow their dividends consistently.

The reason why I consider dividend growth investing a superior investment strategy is because it focuses not only on delivering a rising stream of income but also on total returns. To the untrained eye it might appear that investing in Abbott Labs (ABT) or Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is a poor choice, especially since these companies yield 3%. The main advantage of these companies of course is that they have always paid a low current dividend yield, but have grown their payment in the process. The stock price typically adjusts upward, which decreases the current yield to a normal range. Thus these dividend growth stocks deliver total returns which high yielders cannot match in the long run. In addition to that the rising dividend payment increases the yield on cost on the original investment.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. Abbott Labs (ABT) is a dividend aristocrat which has raised distributions for 37 years in a row. It yields 3% right now, but has a ten year dividend growth rate of 9%. At this rate the company would double its dividend every 8 years. The growth has slowed over the past decade however – since 1983 the dividend growth was almost 13.1% per annum. The stock yielded 2.2% in 1983, which was hardly under the radar of any yield chaser. In fact the current yield at year-end for Abbott fluctuated between a low of 1.20% in 1998 and a high of 2.89% in 2009. The visionary investor who purchased Abbott at the end of 1983 achieved a yield on cost of 10% in 1992 in addition to holding onto a five-bagger. Twenty six years later this investor would have achieved a yield on cost of 55%, which is something that even the highest yielding stock out there cannot match.