Dividend Kings, measured
14 of the 52 Dividend Kings lost money over five years, dividends included.
Daily closes to 25 September 2026, the last complete session
A Dividend King has raised its dividend for 50 straight years or more. That says nothing about whether you made money. If the share price fell further than the dividends paid out, the income never covered the loss.
So we took a list of 52 of them and measured one number each: total return, the dividend-adjusted price series, which already contains every dividend. If total return over the window is negative, the dividends did not cover the price decline. Over the five years to 25 September 2026, 14 of the 52 are negative. Over three years, 13 are.
- 14negative over 5 years
- 13negative over 3 years
- 52companies measured
The convention behind that count. Five years back from the last complete session, taking the last close at or before that date. The three-year window uses the same rule. 14 is what that method returns.
Three of those 14, PEP, TNC and SPGI, sit close enough to flat that a few days' shift in the anchor date flips their sign. So the robust count is 11, and those 11 names are the ones any argument should rest on. Each of the unreliable ones carries a dagger in the table below.
The three deepest over five years are HRL at −42.7%, SWK at −40.7%, SCL at −35.9%.
Five years is still an arbitrary cut, and names flip sides on it in both directions, so both windows sit in the same table. SWK is the clearest case: −40.7% over five years but +23.2% over three, so here it is the longer window that is the unkind one. TGT does the same thing: −23.8% over five against +56.5% over three. Neither window is the true cut. A page that showed only one would be letting the window do the arguing.
All 52, both windows
Sorted by five-year total return, worst first; sort any column instead. Total return includes dividends; price return does not. The dividend gap is the distance between those two series over the window, in percentage points — it is not a sum of dividends paid, and it is not a yield. A dagger marks a figure whose sign is not reliable, explained under the table. The badge on a ticker flags the 13 whose three-year total return is negative, which is the shorter window and a different set of names from the 14 in the headline.
| HRL3y negative | Hormel Foods | −42.7% | −49.4% | 6.7 pts | −42.7% |
| SWK | Stanley Black & Decker | +23.2% | +9.2% | 14.0 pts | −40.7% |
| SCL3y negative | Stepan | −7.4% | −14.0% | 6.6 pts | −35.9% |
| MZTI3y negative | Lancaster Colony / Marzetti | −34.8% | −39.4% | 4.5 pts | −33.3% |
| PNR3y negative | Pentair | −15.3% | −18.2% | 2.9 pts | −25.8% |
| TGT | Target | +56.5% | +40.3% | 16.3 pts | −23.8% |
| PPG3y negative | PPG Industries | −12.7% | −18.6% | 5.9 pts | −19.5% |
| FUL3y negative | H.B. Fuller | −22.8% | −25.9% | 3.2 pts | −18.8% |
| CWT | California Water Service | +3.2% | −4.4% | 7.6 pts | −13.7% |
| ABT | Abbott Laboratories | +10.6% | +3.9% | 6.7 pts | −10.2% |
| KMB3y negative | Kimberly-Clark | −9.8% | −20.3% | 10.5 pts | −10.0% |
| PEP3y negative | PepsiCo | −17.8% | −26.2% | 8.4 pts | −1.9%† (Sign not robust: shifting the anchor date by up to 5 days puts PEP's 5-year total return anywhere from −1.9% to +0.6%. Read this as close to flat.) |
| SPGI | S&P Global | +17.6% | +14.8% | 2.8 pts | −1.8%† (Sign not robust: shifting the anchor date by up to 5 days puts SPGI's 5-year total return anywhere from −1.8% to +4.7%. Read this as close to flat.) |
| TNC3y negative | Tennant | −5.3% | −9.3% | 4.0 pts | −0.8%† (Sign not robust: shifting the anchor date by up to 5 days puts TNC's 5-year total return anywhere from −2.5% to +2.5%. Read this as close to flat.) |
| LOW3y negative | Lowe's | −5.4% | −10.9% | 5.5 pts | +0.3%† (Sign not robust: shifting the anchor date by up to 5 days puts LOW's 5-year total return anywhere from −1.0% to +2.8%. Read this as close to flat.) |
| SON | Sonoco Products | +4.4% | −7.9% | 12.3 pts | +0.4%† (Sign not robust: shifting the anchor date by up to 5 days puts SON's 5-year total return anywhere from −0.5% to +1.6%. Read this as close to flat.) |
| BDX3y negative | Becton Dickinson | −6.7% | −12.3% | 5.6 pts | +3.7% |
| MGEE | MGE Energy | +2.0% | −4.7% | 6.7 pts | +3.9% |
| AWR | American States Water | +10.3% | +2.5% | 7.8 pts | +5.1% |
| SYY | Sysco | +24.0% | +14.1% | 9.9 pts | +11.3% |
| FRT | Federal Realty | +34.5% | +19.7% | 14.8 pts | +13.5% |
| CBSH | Commerce Bancshares | +44.6% | +36.6% | 8.0 pts | +14.8% |
| PG | Procter & Gamble | +5.0% | −2.9% | 8.0 pts | +15.8% |
| UVV | Universal Corp | +7.1% | −11.2% | 18.3 pts | +21.1% |
| GPC3y negative, sign not robust | Genuine Parts | −3.0%† (Sign not robust: shifting the anchor date by up to 5 days puts GPC's 3-year total return anywhere from −4.5% to +0.2%. Read this as close to flat.) | −11.8% | 8.8 pts | +21.7% |
| ABM | ABM Industries | +35.0% | +26.2% | 8.7 pts | +23.3% |
| DOV | Dover | +39.2% | +34.6% | 4.6 pts | +26.0% |
| CL | Colgate-Palmolive | +27.8% | +19.2% | 8.7 pts | +26.5% |
| NWN | Northwest Natural | +37.1% | +19.3% | 17.8 pts | +26.7% |
| MSA | MSA Safety | +16.4% | +12.4% | 4.1 pts | +36.2% |
| RLI3y negative | RLI | −8.5% | −20.1% | 11.6 pts | +36.7% |
| BKH | Black Hills | +49.3% | +31.0% | 18.2 pts | +37.4% |
| RPM | RPM International | +11.8% | +5.9% | 6.0 pts | +39.1% |
| NDSN | Nordson | +50.9% | +45.3% | 5.6 pts | +41.7% |
| ITW | Illinois Tool Works | +25.6% | +17.0% | 8.6 pts | +42.9% |
| ADP | Automatic Data Processing | +18.0% | +9.9% | 8.2 pts | +45.8% |
| TR | Tootsie Roll | +42.0% | +37.6% | 4.4 pts | +53.3% |
| ADM | Archer-Daniels-Midland | +16.0% | +4.9% | 11.1 pts | +56.4% |
| CINF | Cincinnati Financial | +63.9% | +52.4% | 11.5 pts | +57.8% |
| ED | Consolidated Edison | +26.5% | +14.3% | 12.3 pts | +67.9% |
| CSL | Carlisle Companies | +32.0% | +27.6% | 4.4 pts | +67.9% |
| UBSI | United Bankshares | +93.9% | +72.1% | 21.8 pts | +70.0% |
| NFG | National Fuel Gas | +64.8% | +50.1% | 14.7 pts | +78.2% |
| EMR | Emerson Electric | +70.0% | +61.3% | 8.7 pts | +81.4% |
| KO | Coca-Cola | +67.9% | +54.1% | 13.9 pts | +88.6% |
| JNJ | Johnson & Johnson | +84.3% | +69.2% | 15.1 pts | +89.7% |
| MO | Altria | +104.2% | +63.5% | 40.7 pts | +108.5% |
| GRC | Gorman-Rupp | +147.3% | +134.8% | 12.5 pts | +125.1% |
| WMT | Walmart | +105.0% | +98.7% | 6.3 pts | +140.9% |
| NUE | Nucor | +66.3% | +59.3% | 7.0 pts | +163.9% |
| GWW | W.W. Grainger | +84.8% | +80.2% | 4.6 pts | +222.2% |
| PH | Parker-Hannifin | +157.6% | +149.9% | 7.7 pts | +262.0% |
† The sign of these 6 figures is not robust. Recomputing each window with the anchor date shifted up to five days either way changes whether they come out positive or negative. The arithmetic is right in all of them; they simply sit close enough to zero that the anchor date decides the sign. Read each one as “close to flat”, not as a signed result, and do not build an argument on it. Out of 104 figures in this table, these are the ones that cannot carry one.
- PEP 5-year: shown as −1.9%, spans −1.9% to +0.6%
- LOW 5-year: shown as +0.3%, spans −1.0% to +2.8%
- TNC 5-year: shown as −0.8%, spans −2.5% to +2.5%
- GPC 3-year: shown as −3.0%, spans −4.5% to +0.2%
- SON 5-year: shown as +0.4%, spans −0.5% to +1.6%
- SPGI 5-year: shown as −1.8%, spans −1.8% to +4.7%
Daily closes through 25 September 2026, the last complete session. Each figure is rounded to one decimal place on its own, so a row's total minus its price return can differ from the gap column by 0.1 of a point.
How this was measured
One number answers the question
Total return is the dividend-adjusted series, with history back-adjusted, so every dividend is already in it. A negative total return means the dividends did not cover the price decline. Nothing else needs to be computed and nothing is netted off by hand.
The dividend gap is a gap, not a payout
Subtracting the price-return series from the total-return series leaves the dividend contribution over that window, which is what makes the table readable. It is a difference between two series, not a sum of cheques and not an annual yield. Read it as “the dividends were worth this many points over the window”.
Both windows, together
Three years to the last complete session, and five years to the same date. Both are shown side by side because a stock can flip sides depending on where the window starts, and picking the window that makes the point is how this kind of table usually goes wrong.
Where each window starts
Five years back from the last complete session, taking the last close at or before that date. The three-year window uses the same rule. That choice matters more than it looks. Re-deriving the same figures from the first close at or after the anchor instead agrees on the 3-year column to within 0.05 of a percentage point, so the 3-year numbers are not an artefact of the convention.
The 5-year column is the sensitive one
The 5-year anchor falls on a weekend, and the two conventions land either side of it, so the 5-year figures move by up to about 4 percentage points depending on which you pick. That is why no figure here is shown to more than one decimal place, and why two 5-year numbers that differ by less than about 4 points should not be read as different at all. So the headline count holds — how many names sit below zero barely moves, apart from the few flagged as too close to call — but the fine ordering inside the column does not. Read it for scale, not as a league table, and do not infer that one name did better than another from a gap of a point or two.
The data
TradingView daily closes through 25 September 2026. Both series for a company come from the same symbol in one pass, toggling dividend adjustment, so they cannot drift apart. Every symbol's last close was checked against the live quote feed before use, and a mismatch over two cents dropped that symbol rather than publishing it. The figures refresh weekly.
What this does not tell you
The list is not ours, and the streaks are not verified
The 52 companies are the Dividend Kings as listed by @TheLongInvest on 28 September 2026. It is his list, not a registry, and we carry his own caveat: published Dividend King lists vary depending on the treatment of spinoffs, predecessor dividend histories and non-US companies.
We did not verify the 50-year streaks. The list is his; the returns are ours.
Two tickers that sink tables like this one
A bare ticker is not a company. TR resolves to an S&P 500 energy industry group rather than Tootsie Roll, and CSL resolves to CSL Limited, the Australian biotech, rather than Carlisle Companies. Both were pulled from NYSE explicitly. Lancaster Colony now trades as MZTI, The Marzetti Company.
Some of our own numbers cannot carry an argument
6 of the 104 figures in the table are marked with a dagger because their sign depends on the anchor date rather than on the companies. We check that before publishing and mark what fails, rather than presenting 104 figures as if they were equally solid. A figure close to zero is close to zero; a table that prints a sign on it is making a claim the data does not support.
What a total return is not
A total return is a measurement of a past window, not a statement about a business, a dividend's safety, or what any of these companies does next. Several names here are small and thinly traded, which is fine for measuring returns and says nothing about how easily a position could be bought or sold. This page reports what happened over two fixed windows. It does not tell you what to own.
The same test, pointed at trading rules
We test claims rather than repeat them, and this is one of two places that happens: here a 50-year dividend streak is checked against whether the shares actually paid, and in the Claim Checker the trading rules people post are checked against simply holding.
Educational content only. Not investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything named on this page. See the full disclaimer.