These 3 Dividend-Growth Stocks Make the Grade

If you look at the world of dividend-growth stocks, you'll find a lot of bullish sentiment from the Wall Street professionals tasked with researching these companies.

It's not difficult to see why.

A dividend program, in and of itself, is a powerful statement by corporate management about their company's ability to generate profits—specifically, it implies that they expect to produce enough in earnings on a regular basis that they can share some of it with us. Now imagine what it means when a company builds a track record of growing those dividends each and every year.

However, as bullish as "the Street" might be about dividend growers as a whole, research firms clearly favor some dividend-growth stocks more than others … and those are the stocks we're interested in talking about today.

Read on as I introduce you to some of the best dividend-growth stocks you can buy, as measured by consensus ratings across dozens of Wall Street analysts.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. Individual securities, funds, and/or other investments appear for your consideration and not as personalized investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.

Dividend-Growth Stocks That Wall Street Loves

Here's how I came up with today's list of highly rated dividend-growth stocks.

I started with a "selection universe" of the 500 companies within the S&P 500 Index. Next, I included only companies with 10 or more years of uninterrupted annual dividend growth. (These companies are frequently referred to as "Dividend Achievers.")

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From there, I excluded any company with a consensus analyst rating (provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence) of Hold or below. S&P boils down consensus ratings down to a numerical system where …

• 1 to 1.5: Strong Buy
• 1.5 to 2.5: Buy
• 2.5 to 3.5: Hold
• 3.5 to 4.5: Sell
• 4.5 to 5: Strong Sell

In fact, every dividend-growth stock on this list has a rating of 2 or less, indicating that at worst they enjoy a very firm consensus Buy rating, if not an outright Strong Buy rating.

From there, I selected some of the highest-rated dividend stocks that qualified, but with a firm eye on creating a somewhat diversified list. Specifically, no sector is represented by more than two stocks.

Yield wasn't even a consideration. Dividend growers often don't have a high current yield—and if you're taking the long view, they don't necessarily need to. If a company yielding 1% today has a commitment to robust dividend growth, that same stock could yield 3%, 4%, or even more as the years roll by.

The stocks are listed below, which are plucked from my longer list of the 10 best dividend-growth stocks right now, are ordered in descending order of their consensus rating (from the "worst" rating to the best).

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Targa Resources

• Sector: Energy
• Market cap: $58.5 billion
• Dividend yield: 1.6%
• Consensus analyst rating: 1.52 (Buy)

Targa Resources (TRGP) deals in the midstream energy market segment—alongside its subsidiary, Targa Resource Partners LP, it owns a wide array of gathering, processing, logistics, and transportation assets across numerous natural resource plays, including the Permian Basin, Bakken Shale, Anadarko Basin, and the Gulf of Mexico, among others. The Permian Basin is arguably Targa's biggest growth driver; roughly 3 in 5 lower-48 U.S. shale rigs are located there, and about 80% of Targa's natural gas inlet volumes are sourced from there.

Targa went public in 2010, peaked in 2014, cratered, then largely hovered for a few years after that. But after bottoming out during COVID, the stock has roared back to life and nearly doubled in 2024 to hit all-time highs. After flatlining in 2025, shares have exploded upward by 45% in 2026, and the analyst community remains wildly bullish: 20 Buys dwarf just three Hold calls and no Sells, making TRGP one of the market's best dividend stocks to buy right now.

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Much of this can be attributed to Targa's positioning in the Permian.

"We believe Targa is executing at all levels," say Stifel analysts (Buy), who reaffirmed their Buy rating after TRGP reported in-line Q1 results and raised its 2026 guidance for EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). "Targa, servicing the largest producers with strong economics, continues to push volumes on its system higher. In addition, TRGP continues to augment their footprint through acquisitions. As a result TRGP is confident in its EBITDA growth over several years."

Energy infrastructure stocks are a different breed. Many of them are master limited partnerships (MLPs), which are required to return a majority of their income to unitholders (shares in MLPs) in the form of distributions (dividend-like payments to shareholders that have different tax consequences). Targa is technically a corporation, though, so it pays dividends like a traditional stock.

In April, the company announced a 25% increase to its dividend, to $1.25 per share. That comes out to 45% of 2026 earnings projections.

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Smurfit Westrock

• Sector: Consumer discretionary
• Market capitalization: $24.6 billion
• Dividend yield: 3.9%
• Consensus analyst rating: 1.33 (Strong Buy)

It's one of the best value stocks right now. It's one of the best growth stocks, too. So why not add another honorary by calling it one of the best dividend-growth stocks on the market?

Smurfit Westrock (SW)—the product of a 2024 merger of Ireland's Smurfit Kappa and America's Westrock—is a global manufacturer of consumer packaging, corrugated packaging, and a variety of paper products. And by virtue of that merger, the combined entity is now one of the largest packaging providers in the world, with operations in 40 countries.

Consider Smurfit Westrock an interesting beneficiary of technological trends—specifically, the continued rise of e-commerce. As people increasingly move away from buying in brick-and-mortar stores and toward online shopping … well, those products have to get shipped in something, and that's precisely where Smurfit comes in.

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"[We estimate] that the industry will remain strong, and we see modest expansion at a compound annual growth rate of 3%-4% through 2028," writes Argus Research analyst Alexandra Yates, who is one of 15 analysts covering Smurfit, all of whom rate the stock at Buy. "We favor companies with pulp, paperboard packaging, and corrugated product lines, and expect this segment to show continued long-term growth through 2030.

"We see long-term upside potential and expect earnings growth congruent with growth in e-commerce and growth in demand for sustainable paper and packaging goods. We think that current valuation multiples are attractive given the company’s recovering earnings outlook through FY26."

The company has only existed as Smurfit Westrock for a couple of years. However, both Smurfit and Westrock were dividend growers prior to the merger; applying Smurfit's longer streak to the entire entity, the company boasts 14 consecutive years of dividend increases. Its most recent upgrade, announced in February 2026, was a 5% raise to 45.23¢ per share. That's a fairly high 80% of the current year's earnings estimates, but a far more comfortable 55% or so of Wall Street's 2027 bottom-line prediction.

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Best Dividend-Growth Stock #2: Mastercard

• Sector: Financials
• Market cap: $440.9 billion
• Dividend yield: 0.7%
• Consensus analyst rating: 1.31 (Strong Buy)

Mastercard (MA) is one of the world's top payment card networks, spanning some 3.7 billion Mastercard credit and debit cards accepted at more than 110 million locations in over 210 countries and territories. It's not just individual consumers who swipe with Mastercard, either—many businesses actually purchase from other businesses using Mastercard's plastic.

But what's interesting about Mastercard is that, despite making it possible for literally $10 trillion-plus worth of annual transactions to go through, the company isn't really responsible for any of the underlying funds. Mastercard itself is not a bank—instead, thousands of banks and other financial institutions use the company's technology to give its customers the ability to spend anywhere, anytime. So, if you use a Chase Mastercard, Chase Bank is taking on the financial risk; Mastercard is just the middleman between merchant and bank.

And it's quite the middleman.

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"MA continues to demonstrate strong innovation capabilities," says Alexander Yokum, analyst at independent research firm CFRA (Buy). "Value-added services now represent nearly 40% of total revenue, making the business less sensitive to economic cycles. The company is also positioning itself for emerging opportunities in two key areas: agentic commerce, where it is prepared to capitalize on expected rapid growth, and stablecoins, where its proposed acquisition of BVNK would provide critical technology to send, receive, convert, and hold digital currencies."

That's just one of 37 Buy calls on Mastercard stock. The remaining two ratings on the stock are Holds.

Another reason why Mastercard is among the best dividend-growth stocks to buy right now? The card company has strung together 15 years of uninterrupted dividend hikes, delivering nearly 300% payout growth over that time. Its most recent hike was a substantial 14% boost to 87¢ per share, announced in late 2025 starting with the January dividend. That represents less than 20% of expected earnings for 2026, giving Mastercard the flexibility to keep the pedal down.

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