Best Dividend Stocks 2003-2023

"When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever."
— Warren Buffett

This famous Warren Buffett quote got us thinking: which prominent dividend paying stocks have delivered the best returns over a multi-decade holding period? To find prominent dividend payers, we looked through the S&P 500 constituents (any of which would certainly be considered "prominent" companies likely to have above-average management), and we screened for a minimum 1% dividend yield.

Of those companies that passed this screen, we next calculated the 20-year total returns for each, and ranked them by highest 20-year return with dividends reinvested, with the resulting best dividend stocks of 2003 - 2023 ranked to the top of the list. In this slideshow, we present the top 10 results of this exercise — the cream-of-the-crop 10 best dividend stocks of the past twenty years from within the S&P 500. Continue below to see the best-dividend-stock results:

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