The Kiplinger Dividend 15, the list of our favorite dividend-paying stocks, doled out plenty of payout love in its first year, with an average yield of 3.7%.
To make it into our lineup, dividend stocks had to first beat the 2% average yield of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. We then looked for firms that are leaders in their industry and that have solid prospects for expanding their sales and profits, while also generating enough cash to pay investors. And we aim to avoid dividend traps— stocks with high yields but weak underlying businesses and poor prospects.

Dividend Grower: AbbVie
YIELD: 5.3%

ANNUAL DIVIDEND: $4.28

CONSECUTIVE YEARS OF INCREASES: 6

FIVE-YEAR DIVIDEND GROWTH RATE: 21.7%

ONE-YEAR TOTAL RETURN: -26.2%

AbbVie (ABBV, $81), a pharmaceutical company with several blockbuster patents and a strong group of new products in the pipeline, is the newest member of the Kiplinger Dividend 15 and the replacement for CVS.

AbbVie expects sales of Humira — used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease — to approach $21 billion by 2020. The firm is developing a drug to treat glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and another to treat multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.

AbbVie has paid dividends only since 2013, when it was spun off from Abbott Laboratories. Since then, the payout has grown at a five-year annualized rate of nearly 18%, with a 40% bump in the annual payout in 2018
— Read on www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/investing/T018-S003-kiplinger-dividend-15-favorite-dividend-stocks/index.html