Best Dividend Growth Stocks?

[MarcN]

By growth, did you mean dividend growth rate or expected total annual return?

Personally, I like to look at the junction between current dividend yield and expected dividend growth rate. There are several ways to represent that notion. One I use is to calculate the expected number of years it would take to attain 10% yield on current cost.
The formula I use in excel is: =LOG((0.1/(Yield/100)),(1+(DGR/100)))
Where yield is current dividend yield and DGR is estimated dividend growth rate.

Let's look at 2 examples:
1) APPL offers a current dividend yield of 1.48%. One could estimate that forward dividend growth rates would be between 7% and 10% annually. It would take between 20 and 28 years to obtain 10% yield on current price.

2) TSE:CU (Canadian Utilities) offers a current dividend yield of 3.88%. Forwards dividend growth rates could be between 7-11%. It would take Between 9 to 14 years to get 10% yield on current cost.

I would favor 2). I try to find stocks that would attain 10% yield on current cost in about 10-15 years.

Using that approach, stocks I find interesting at this time are:
TSE:CU
FTS
HCN
LOW
MDT
MSFT
PSA
SBUX
TSE:T (Telus)
VFC

In addition, all time favorites are JNJ, D and O.