Key Points
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Colgate-Palmolive, McDonald’s, and Target have each raised their dividends for 50-plus consecutive years.
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All three companies kept raising their payouts even during stretches when their stock prices or sales were struggling.
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McDonald’s just reached Dividend King status in September.
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Some companies treat their dividend like a bill they have to pay every month, not a bonus they hand out when times are good. That mindset is what separates a stock that merely offers a dividend from one that has actually built its business around protecting it, through recessions, inflation spikes, and years when growth simply wasn’t there.
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These three consumer stocks fall firmly into the second category, and all three are worth a look heading into November.
1. Colgate-Palmolive: 63 years and counting
Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL), the maker of Colgate toothpaste and Palmolive soap, has raised its dividend every year for 63 consecutive years, a streak that puts it among a small handful of companies known as Dividend Kings. A Dividend King is a company that’s grown its dividend payment for at least 50 consecutive years.
The current quarterly payout sits at $0.53 a share, up from $0.52, a modest increase but one made in a year when the stock has actually struggled enough to get bumped from the S&P 100 index in September. That’s the kind of detail that would normally worry investors, but Colgate kept raising its dividend anyway, which says something about how the company prioritizes that payout even when the stock itself isn’t cooperating.
Oral care and household products are about as recession-resistant as consumer spending gets, people don’t stop buying toothpaste because the economy wobbles, and that steady demand is what’s funded 63 straight years of increases.
2. McDonald’s: The newest member of the Dividend Kings
McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) just crossed a threshold worth paying attention to. In September, the company announced its 50th consecutive year of dividend increases, officially joining the Dividend Kings club for the first time, with the quarterly payout rising 4% to $1.93 a share.
What makes this one interesting is the timing: McDonald’s hit that milestone while its stock was trading near 52-week lows, with comparable sales growth slowing and competition across the restaurant industry intensifying. In other words, management didn’t wait for a comfortable moment to lock in the milestone, it kept the streak alive through a genuinely tougher stretch for the business.
CEO Chris Kempczinski said, “We see an opportunity to raise the bar in the U.S. and accelerate performance in our largest market.”
A company that treats a half-century dividend record as non-negotiable, even when same-store sales are under pressure, is sending a clear signal about where the payout ranks on its list of priorities.
3. Target: Proof a reliable dividend can survive a real stumble
Target (NYSE: TGT) is the one with the most dramatic backstory of the three.
The retailer went through three straight years of sales declines before new CEO Michael Fiddelke’s turnaround plan began to show results this year, and the stock has swung wildly as a result. Through all of that, Target kept its dividend streak alive, raising its payout again this past summer to put 2026 on track to be its 55th consecutive year of increases, by the company’s own count.
The quarterly dividend now sits at $1.16 a share, and the stock’s recent struggles have actually pushed the yield up to around 3%, well above where it sat before the sales slump began.
Target is proof that a long dividend streak isn’t just about steady growth, it’s about a management team that keeps writing the check even while the rest of the business is getting fixed.
Some catches every dividend investor should remember
Here’s the part that’s easy to gloss over: none of these streaks, 63 years, 50 years, or 55 years, come with an actual guarantee. A dividend is a decision a board of directors makes one quarter at a time, not a contractual obligation like a bond’s interest payment, and a long track record only tells you what a company has chosen to do in the past, not what it’s legally required to do going forward.
Even Dividend Kings have been dethroned before when a business changed enough that the math no longer worked. That doesn’t make these three bad picks. Their track records reflect real, repeated decisions to protect the dividend through hard years, but it’s a risk worth sitting with before buying any stock for its yield. A long streak is a strong signal of intent, not a promise.
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Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Colgate-Palmolive and Target. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2028 $320 calls on McDonald’s and short January 2028 $340 calls on McDonald’s. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
