Two Decades of Rising Dividends

A dividend growth champion is a company that raised its cash dividend every single year for decades. Across our two-decade dividend record the names below lifted their payout every year without a single cut or freeze, and the strongest grew it more than sixty times over. This page ranks them by that multiple: the latest annual dividend divided by the earliest one on file.

What is a dividend growth champion?

Two numbers describe each name. The first is the streak: the run of consecutive years the company increased its total cash dividend. The second is the multiple: how many times over the payout grew from the start of the streak to the latest full year. A long streak and a large multiple are different signals, and the ranking here sorts on the multiple.

Wall Street tracks two famous clubs by streak length. A Dividend Aristocrat has raised its payout for at least 25 straight years; a Dividend King for at least 50. Our warehouse's dividend history begins around 2004, and inside that window the streaks measured here cap near 21 years. A 25-year Aristocrat and a 60-year King both read the same ~21 on this page. Treat this as every year in our two-decade record, not the longest streak of all time.

Which companies raised their dividend every year?

The panel below holds the twenty names that increased their dividend every year in the record, ranked by how many times over the payout grew. The streak column sits at 20 or 21 for all of them: the increases never stopped inside our window. What separates them is the multiple.

WITH annual AS (
    SELECT ticker,
           toYear(ex_dividend_date) AS y,
           round(sum(cash_amount), 4) AS div
    FROM global_markets.stocks_dividends
    WHERE frequency IN (1, 2, 4, 12)
      AND ex_dividend_date >= '2000-01-01'
      AND ex_dividend_date < toStartOfYear(today())
    GROUP BY ticker, y
),
f AS (
    SELECT ticker, y, div,
           lagInFrame(div) OVER w AS prev,
           lagInFrame(y) OVER w AS prev_y
    FROM annual
    WINDOW w AS (PARTITION BY ticker ORDER BY y ASC)
),
brk AS (
    SELECT ticker, y, div,
           (prev IS NULL OR div <= prev OR (y - prev_y) > 1) AS is_break
    FROM f
)
SELECT ticker,
       max(y) - maxIf(y, is_break) AS streak_years,
       round(argMax(div, y) / argMin(div, y), 1) AS dividend_multiple
FROM brk
GROUP BY ticker
HAVING streak_years >= 20 AND max(y) >= toYear(today()) - 2
ORDER BY dividend_multiple DESC
LIMIT 20

TXN tops the ranking, growing its annual dividend 61.9 times over across 21 unbroken years. LOW and MSFT follow near 42.7x and 42.5x. All 20 names share the flat shape in the streak column, so the bars in that series line up while the multiple series fans out. Even the smallest multiple on the page, JNJ at 4.7x, means the payout grew nearly fivefold over the same span.

Streak versus multiple: two different signals

The streak measures durability. A company that raised its dividend through 2008, through 2020, and through every year between kept the commitment across two recessions and a pandemic. That is a record about consistency, and every name on this list cleared the same 20-year bar.

The multiple measures the size of the compounding. A payout that grows a few percent every year multiplies over two decades, and a payout that grows in double digits multiplies far more. The gap between the top of the ranking and the bottom is not about who kept raising: they all did. It is about the pace of each annual raise, compounded year on year.

How the raise compounds, one champion year by year

A single multiple hides the mechanism. The trace below follows one champion, Microsoft, one calendar year at a time. Each point is the total cash dividend paid across that year, regular dividends only.

SELECT toYear(ex_dividend_date) AS year,
       round(sum(cash_amount), 4) AS annual_dividend
FROM global_markets.stocks_dividends
WHERE ticker = 'MSFT'
  AND frequency IN (1, 2, 4, 12)
  AND ex_dividend_date >= '2004-01-01'
  AND ex_dividend_date < toStartOfYear(today())
GROUP BY year
ORDER BY year

Microsoft's annual dividend rose from $0.08 in 2004 to $3.4 in 2025. The line rises across the whole span and never turns down. Each year's raise sits on top of the prior year's base, and that stacking is what the multiple column on the ranking captures, drawn here as a curve. The same shape holds for every name on the list; only the steepness differs.

Why an unbroken two-decade streak matters

An unbroken two-decade rise is rare. Most dividend payers eventually cut or freeze the payout during a downturn, and a single freeze ends a streak. A name that kept raising through every year in the record cleared a durability bar most companies did not.

That record is a starting point for research, not a promise. A streak describes the past and can end in any future year. Income investors who lean on names like these still face concentration risk when a handful of holdings dominate a portfolio, and the cash a dividend throws off between pay dates has its own place to sit while it waits to be reinvested.

How to read the multiple versus the yield

The multiple on this page is growth, not income today. A stock that grew its dividend sixty times over may still carry a modest dividend yield when its share price climbed alongside the payout. Growth and current yield answer different questions: one is the history of the raise, the other is the check you collect now relative to the price you pay.

To catch the next payment on any of these names, the upcoming ex-dividend dates page lists who goes ex next, and the ex-dividend date explained covers the cutoff that decides whether a buyer collects the coming dividend.

FAQ

What is a dividend growth champion?

A company that has raised its cash dividend every single year for a long run without a cut or a freeze. On this page the run is measured across our two-decade dividend record, so the streaks cap near 21 years. The names range from a payout that grew nearly fivefold to one that grew more than 61.9 times over.

What is the difference between a Dividend Aristocrat and a Dividend King?

Both are streak clubs. A Dividend Aristocrat has raised its dividend for at least 25 consecutive years; a Dividend King for at least 50. Our data begins around 2004, so an Aristocrat and a King both appear here with a streak near 21 years. The label on this page is about the raises we can see in the record, not the full historical count.

Does a long dividend growth streak guarantee future raises?

No. A streak is a record of past consistency, and any year a company can freeze or cut its dividend and end it. A long streak shows the payout survived past recessions, which is a durability signal, not a forecast. Treat it as one input to research alongside the company's earnings and balance sheet.

What does the dividend multiple mean?

It is the latest annual dividend divided by the earliest one in the streak. A multiple of 40 means the payout grew forty times over across the years measured. It captures the compounding of many small annual raises, and it is separate from the dividend yield, which compares the current payout to the share price.

Every panel above ships with the SQL that produced it. Expand any one to audit the numbers, or build your own dividend growth screen on the Strasmore terminal.