JP Morgan Claverhouse IT (LSE: JCH) has a record of 41 consecutive years of dividend increases. At a current share price of 582p, the trust is on a trailing yield of 3.4%.
Picking great dividend shares has helped JP Morgan Claverhouse outperform the FTSE All-Share Index over the past three, five and 10 years.
Sectors in which the trust is currently overweight against the index include financials, healthcare and telecoms. The trust’s three biggest holdings in these three sectors are: HSBC (LSE: HSBA) (NYSE: HSBC.US), AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and Vodafone (LSE: VOD).
HSBC
Banking giant HSBC may have ditched its advertising slogan “The World’s Local Bank” a couple of years ago, but it has remained a convenient tag for financial hacks like me to emphasise the group’s global reach.
Geographical diversification helped HSBC get through the 2008/9 financial crisis. And while the company did reduce its dividend during those dark days, the payout has been growing at a good clip since, including a 9% rise for 2013.
City analysts are expecting a more modest 4% increase this year, followed by a 7% uplift for 2015. The recent market sell-off has seen HSBC’s shares hit a 52-week low of 589p, pushing the forward dividend yield up to a juicy 5.5% for investors today.
AstraZeneca
It’s been a good year for shareholders of AstraZeneca. The shares, which started the year at 3,600p, are currently trading at 4,427p on the back of the company’s strengthening drugs pipeline and management’s confident rejection of a 5,500p takeover offer from US pharma giant Pfizer.
The improving outlook hasn’t yet fed through to a rising dividend. Analysts are expecting the 2014 payout to be pegged at $2.80 for a fourth consecutive year, and for there to be little, if any, increase in 2015.
Nevertheless, the sterling translation of the dollar dividend equates to a yield of 4%, which is comfortably above the FTSE 100 average of 3.5%. And we could see the payout begin to rise pretty strongly further down the line.
Vodafone
Vodafone has been in a period of transition since selling its stake in US phones firm Verizon Wireless to Verizon Communications for £84bn earlier this year. The mobile giant’s earnings won’t — for at least a couple of years — cover the rising dividends the company hopes to pay.
Nevertheless, management reckons it can afford to lift the annual payouts, and signalled its confidence by raising the company’s recent interim dividend by 2%. If that carries through to the final dividend, as City analysts expect, we’d be looking at a forward yield of around 5.3% at a current share price of 213p.
