“Our favorite holding period is forever,” said Warren Buffet once, and that’s the sort of mindset that we use when investing our own money. While we’re constantly coming across interesting technologies to invest in, we also see plenty companies crash and burn after everyone thought they would be the next Microsoft. If you’re going to hold a stock forever, you need a simple way of determining how likely it will be that the company can continue to grow over long periods of time while weathering inevitable market recessions. One metric we like to look at is the number of years in a row that a company has increased their dividend. Once such a track record is established, companies will usually go to great lengths to keep the run going.
Medtronic Stock and Dividend Growth
One company that’s managed to increase their dividend for 41 years running now is Medtronic (MDT), a $131 billion medical device company that’s managed to grow their dividend by more than 14% every year for the past ten years straight. If you want to see what that looks like, it’s best expressed in the form of a dividend yield increase. Today’s dividend investor might balk at the 2% yield that Medtronic pays today, but here’s how quickly that yield grows at a 14.2% growth rate over ten years:
