The list of dividend aristocrats, dividend achievers, or dividend champion is favorite hunting ground most of the dividend focused investors. This list includes companies from S&P500 index or S&P1500 index that have been continuously raising dividends last 25 years or 10 years or more. In general, these are companies that are listed on US markets. The list of companies (and dividend opportunities) will keep churning. It is really difficult to predict which ones will continue to survive for another 10 years or more. As they age, it will be harder for them to sustain their dividend growth momentum. The likelihood of their ability to grow dividend will continue to diminish.
We need to understand dividend growth in the context of growth in US economy. Dividend growth is only possible on the back of growth in corporate earnings. Keeping with the growth of US economy, many of these companies also continued to grow and hence dividends kept increasing. However, investors cannot ignore the current US economy vis-à-vis emerging market economies.
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Waste Management Inc. (WM) provides integrated waste management services in North America. The company is engaged in collection, transfer, recycling, disposal, and waste-to-energy services. WM is neither a dividend aristocrat nor a dividend achiever. In fact, WM has started showing some dividend growth trends in last five years. While I am presenting and showing data from last 10 years, I am only using last five years of dividend data. My objective here is to understand if WM has any potential to be a dividend achiever.



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