3 Dividend-Growth Stocks the Pros Love Now

ByAmeliaMay 12, 20267 Mins read4

Dividend-growth stocks don’t often boast the fat headline yields that typically draw income investors in. But in many cases, that’s because the stock is rising so quickly, the yield keeps getting smooshed back down.

Hard to fault a company for that.

When a company pays a dividend at all, it’s a statement by corporate management. It says, “We’re so optimistic that we can produce such a high and consistent level of earnings that we can afford to routinely give some of it back to shareholders.” So just imagine what it says about a company when it raises the amount it pays year after year.

A dividend program, in and of itself, is a powerful statement by corporate management about their company’s ability to generate profits—specifically, it implies that they expect to produce enough in earnings on a regular basis that they can share some of it with us. Now imagine what it means when a company builds a track record of growing those dividends each and every year.

But even among dividend growers, there’s some separation between the good and the great. Today, I want to talk about the latter.

Read on as I highlight three of the best-rated dividend growth stocks to buy, based on consensus ratings across the Wall Street stock-research community.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. Individual securities, funds, and/or other investments appear for your consideration and not as personalized investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.

Dividend-Growth Stocks That Wall Street Loves

Here’s how I came up with today’s list of highly rated dividend-growth stocks.

I started with a “selection universe” of the 500 companies within the S&P 500 Index. Next, I included only companies with 10 or more years of uninterrupted annual dividend growth. (These companies are frequently referred to as “Dividend Achievers.”)

From there, I excluded any company with a consensus analyst rating (provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence) of Hold or below. S&P boils down consensus ratings down to a numerical system where …

1 to 1.5: Strong Buy
1.5 to 2.5: Buy
2.5 to 3.5: Hold
3.5 to 4.5: Sell
4.5 to 5: Strong Sell

In fact, every dividend-growth stock on this list has a rating of 2 or less, indicating that at worst they enjoy a very firm consensus Buy rating, if not an outright Strong Buy rating.

From there, I selected some of the highest-rated dividend stocks that qualified, but with a firm eye on creating a somewhat diversified list. Specifically, no sector is represented by more than two stocks.

Yield wasn’t even a consideration. Dividend growers often don’t have a high current yield—and if you’re taking the long view, they don’t necessarily need to. If a company yielding 1% today has a commitment to robust dividend growth, that same stock could yield 3%, 4%, or even more as the years roll by.

I’ve put together a full list of 10 top dividend-growth stocks, but below, I’ll highlight three of the more interesting names.

Equinix

Sector: Real estate
Market cap: $105.8 billion
Dividend yield: 1.9%
Consensus analyst rating: 1.58 (Buy)

Equinix (EQIX) is a real estate play on numerous technological megatrends, including cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence.

EQIX is the largest global data center and colocation provider for enterprise networks. In other words, Equinix is responsible for the actual server rooms that house all the bits and bytes that power all the content and software we offload to “the cloud” without really considering where the cloud is.

Considering the fact that cloud-based software is now just the normal way of doing business, that creates a massive opportunity for Equinix as one of the largest specialized firms in the space. This digital infrastructure provider boasts 513,000 interconnections to more than 10,500 customers, with a global reach of 77 metro areas in 36 countries. Those numbers will surely grow, with the company currently working on 46 projects in 32 markets across 22 countries.

“We continue to expect strong demand for the data center category over the next few years given core and cloud infrastructure needs, as well as expanding demand for GenAI workloads,” says Citi analyst Michael Rollins, who rates the stock at Buy. That’s just one of 26 Buy-equivalent ratings on the stock, which compares well to just five Holds and only one sell.

As for the dividend growth? Equinix just clears the bar with 11 consecutive years of annual dividend growth. But that growth has been explosive, with the quarterly distribution rocketing a cumulative 205% higher since EQIX started paying regular dividends in 2015.

By the way: EQIX is a real estate investment (REIT), which is a specially structured business that exists to empower the general public to invest in real estate. The upside? REITs must pay at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders, which usually results in above-average yields. The downside? While many stocks’ dividends are usually “qualified” and thus taxed at more favorable long-term capital gains tax rates, REITs’ dividends (including Equinix’s) are generally non-qualified and thus taxed at less favorable ordinary income tax rates.

REITs are also different from a payout ratio perspective. REITs frequently use a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) metric called “funds from operations” (FFO) to express their profitability, and they’re typically a better gauge of dividend health than regular earnings. In EQIX’s case, it’s paying 50% of estimated adjusted FFO (AFFO), which implies the dividend is plenty secure.

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Smurfit Westrock

Sector: Consumer discretionary
Market capitalization: $21.4 billion
Dividend yield: 4.4%
Consensus analyst rating: 1.33 (Strong Buy)

It’s one of the best value stocks right now. It’s one of the best growth stocks, too. So why not add another honorary by calling it one of the best dividend-growth stocks on the market?

Smurfit Westrock (SW)—the product of a 2024 merger of Ireland’s Smurfit Kappa and America’s Westrock—is a global manufacturer of consumer packaging, corrugated packaging, and a variety of paper products. And by virtue of that merger, the combined entity is now one of the largest packaging providers in the world, with operations in 40 countries.

Consider Smurfit Westrock an interesting beneficiary of technological trends—specifically, the continued rise of e-commerce. As people increasingly move away from buying in brick-and-mortar stores and toward online shopping … well, those products have to get shipped in something, and that’s precisely where Smurfit comes in.

“[We estimate] that the industry will remain strong, and we see modest expansion at a compound annual growth rate of 3%-4% through 2028,” writes Argus Research analyst Alexandra Yates, who is one of 15 analysts covering Smurfit, all of whom rate the stock at Buy. “We favor companies with pulp, paperboard packaging, and corrugated product lines, and expect this segment to show continued long-term growth through 2030.

“We see long-term upside potential and expect earnings growth congruent with growth in e-commerce and growth in demand for sustainable paper and packaging goods. We think that current valuation multiples are attractive given the company’s recovering earnings outlook through FY26.”

The company has only existed as Smurfit Westrock for a couple of years. However, both Smurfit and Westrock were dividend growers prior to the merger; applying Smurfit’s longer streak to the entire entity, the company boasts 14 consecutive years of dividend increases. Its most recent upgrade, announced in February 2026, was a 5% raise to 45.23¢ per share. That’s a fairly high 80% of the current year’s earnings estimates, but a far more comfortable 55% or so of Wall Street’s 2027 bottom-line prediction.

Mastercard

Sector: Financials
Market cap: $443.9 billion
Dividend yield: 0.9%
Consensus analyst rating: 1.34 (Strong Buy)

Mastercard (MA) is one of the world’s top payment card networks, spanning some 3.7 billion Mastercard credit and debit cards accepted at more than 110 million locations in over 210 countries and territories. It’s not just individual consumers who swipe with Mastercard, either—many businesses actually purchase from other businesses using Mastercard’s plastic.

But what’s interesting about Mastercard is that, despite making it possible for literally $10 trillion-plus worth of annual transactions to go through, the company isn’t really responsible for any of the underlying funds. Mastercard itself is not a bank—instead, thousands of banks and other financial institutions use the company’s technology to give its customers the ability to spend anywhere, anytime. So, if you use a Chase Mastercard, Chase Bank is taking on the financial risk; Mastercard is just the middleman between merchant and bank.

And it’s quite the middleman.

“MA continues to demonstrate strong innovation capabilities,” says Alexander Yokum, analyst at independent research firm CFRA (Buy). “Value-added services now represent nearly 40% of total revenue, making the business less sensitive to economic cycles. The company is also positioning itself for emerging opportunities in two key areas: agentic commerce, where it is prepared to capitalize on expected rapid growth, and stablecoins, where its proposed acquisition of BVNK would provide critical technology to send, receive, convert, and hold digital currencies.”

That’s just one of 36 Buy calls on Mastercard stock. The remaining three ratings on the stock are Holds.

Another reason why Mastercard is among the best dividend-growth stocks to buy right now? The card company has strung together 15 years of uninterrupted dividend hikes, delivering nearly 300% payout growth over that time. Its most recent hike was a substantial 14% boost to 87¢ per share, announced in late 2025 starting with the January dividend. That represents less than 20% of expected earnings for 2026, giving Mastercard the flexibility to keep the pedal down.

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