Dividend yield for buy-and-hold investors is 12% on average
Ashtead offers the highest yield for those buying 10 years ago – at 48%
Average yield on ‘dividend heroes’ to be 3.2% in 2018
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell comments:
“We often take dividend yields as a snapshot, looking at investors buying the stock at today’s price. However, investing is a long term game, and many investors have had their money in these companies for a number of years.
“If you had chosen wisely to invest in these ‘dividend hero’ companies 10 years ago, you would be seeing a 48% yield in one instance.
“Comparing the 2008 share price with the forecast 2018 dividend across the 26 companies gives an average yield of almost 12% - which any investor would probably bite your hand off for.
“These 26 firms are ‘dividend heroes’, so called because they have increased their dividend in each and every of the past 10 years. Taking a look at the total return of this group – so growth and income reinvested – shows the importance of dividends in boosting the share price.
“Industrial equipment rental company Ashtead has handed investors a more than 4,250% total return over the past 10 years. It should also be noted that these calculations run to July 2008, when the financial crisis was hitting companies across the globe – making these returns even more impressive.
“For this year, the average dividend yield for the 26 ‘dividend heroes’ is forecast to be 3.2% - while respectable, that is below the 4.1% average for the FTSE 100.
“However, only 13 of the 26 were actually in the FTSE 100 index a decade ago, so investors may need to dig through the FTSE 250 listing of smaller companies to find the next generation of dividend growth champions to buy today.”
| 2018 yield on 16 July '08 share price | 2008 yield on 16 July '08 share price | Total return since 16-Jul-08 |
Ashtead | 48.0% | 4.1% | 4,257.9% |
Micro Focus International | 28.4% | 2.5% | 657.1% |
Hargreaves Lansdown | 22.0% | 4.2% | 1,591.6% |
St. James's Place | 19.3% | 2.0% | 583.9% |
Croda | 12.9% | 3.1% | 877.0% |
InterContinental Hotels | 12.6% | 4.1% | 784.1% |
British American Tobacco | 11.4% | 4.9% | 197.2% |
Paddy Power Betfair | 15.0% | 3.2% | 509.1% |
Standard Life Aberdeen | 10.7% | 5.9% | 150.3% |
Imperial Brands | 10.1% | 3.7% | 97.1% |
Whitbread | 10.0% | 3.6% | 348.8% |
Compass | 9.8% | 3.5% | 488.6% |
Prudential | 9.4% | 3.8% | 302.9% |
Vodafone | 9.0% | 5.3% | 122.5% |
DCC | 8.0% | 2.8% | 612.4% |
Halma | 7.9% | 4.2% | 797.4% |
Intertek | 7.7% | 2.3% | 571.5% |
Sage | 7.6% | 3.5% | 307.7% |
Bunzl | 7.1% | 3.2% | 339.1% |
Diageo | 7.0% | 3.9% | 284.0% |
SSE | 6.8% | 4.7% | 66.7% |
Associated British Foods | 5.5% | 2.7% | 307.8% |
Johnson Matthey | 5.0% | 2.3% | 152.4% |
BAE Systems | 5.0% | 3.3% | 132.7% |
Shire | 3.6% | 0.9% | 421.3% |
Scottish Mortgage | 2.8% | 2.0% | 380.3% |
AVERAGE | 11.6% | 3.5% | 590% |
Source: Thomson Reuters Datastream, Company accounts, AJ Bell Research
Notes to editors:
Each quarter, AJ Bell takes the forecasts for the FTSE 100 companies from all the leading city analysts and aggregates them to provide the dividend outlook for each company. The data above relates to the outlook for 2018 and 2019. Data correct as at 16 July 2018.