5 Best Dividend Stocks For Steady Growth

3. Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN)

3-Year Average Dividend Growth: 37.3%
Consecutive Years of Dividend Growth: 11

Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN) is an American financial services firm that provides a wide range of investment research and data to individuals and financial advisors. The company is known for its comprehensive insights into investments, funds, stocks, and other financial assets, as well as its proprietary ratings and analysis.

In the second quarter of 2023, Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN) generated over $504.7 million in revenues, up 7.3% from the same period last year. The company remained committed to its shareholder return, distributing $16 million to investors through dividends during the quarter, which makes it one of the best dividend stocks on our list.

Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN) currently pays a quarterly dividend of $0.375 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.66%, as of August 29. The company has raised its dividends for 11 years in a row.

The number of hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey owning stakes in Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN) grew to 22 in Q2 2023, from 20 in the previous quarter. The collective value of these stakes is over $970.7 million.

Polen Capital mentioned Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN) in its Q2 2023 investor letter. Here is what the firm has to say:

“Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN) is a leader in providing investment and wealth management data, software, and solutions to the financial services industry. Besides their own “Morningstar” brand, which is held in high regard by investment professionals and financial advisors for their decades-long history of providing cost-effective insight and transparency to a wide breadth of clients, they also own popular services like “Pitchbook,” “Sustainalytics” and “DBRS.” Management has spent the last four years investing heavily in several business lines (like private markets data and ESG) that have depressed margins in the near term but should provide durable growth opportunities for many years. As the company reaps the benefits from these investments over the coming years, we expect margins to track towards their prior levels of 20-25% (from current low-to-mid teens). Combined with low-double-digit revenue growth and management’s long history of opportunistic share buybacks, this should translate into ~20% EPS growth over our holding period.”