Jim Cramer’s Top 10 Dividend Stocks for Safe, Consistent Returns

From 2000 through 2009, dividends earned S&P 500 investors an annualized 1.8%, according to Hartford Funds. Even with those payments, the index posted a negative total return for the decade. Over the longer stretch from 1940 through 2025, Hartford found that dividend income accounted for an average of 33% of the index’s total return. For investors who rely on quarterly dividends to pay bills, that history raises a practical question: when sales slow and debt payments take priority, how much of that income can they count on?

The COVID-19 pandemic showed how quickly that income could change. S&P 500 companies paid $119 billion in dividends in the second quarter of 2020, slightly more than a year earlier, as companies honored dividends declared before the pandemic. During those same three months, 50 stocks in the index cut or suspended their dividends. According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, those decisions reduced expected annual payments by $29 billion.

On November 2, a U.S. soup and snack maker paid shareholders 25 cents a share, down from 39 cents in August. An investor with 1,000 shares who collected $390 in August received just $250 in November. Management cut the dividend by nearly 36% to pay down debt faster after quarterly sales fell 8%. For income investors, the warning signs matter most while the old dividend is still in place. That was the issue CNBC’s Jim Cramer raised about another food stock in September.

For consumer businesses, an early clue can be what shoppers decide they can do without. A family that skips dinner out still needs groceries, but even in the cereal aisle, it can switch brands. Those everyday choices help explain why Cramer sees 10 familiar consumer stocks so differently. On the September 18 episode of Mad Money, Cramer said he had never expected to see a familiar cereal maker yield 6.72%. The dividend had caught his eye because the shares had fallen so far. What troubled him was why a business he had long considered dependable was suddenly offering that much income.

Less than two weeks later, a caller asked Cramer about a pipeline operator yielding 7.6%. This time, he liked what he saw. The operator’s second-quarter results help explain what gave him confidence in the higher payout. In November, the operator raised its quarterly distribution by 12.5%.

Cramer has applied similar reasoning in his Charitable Trust. In his 2022 investing guide, he recalled buying shares of a drugmaker yielding 5% to 6% while investors worried about the loss of patent protection on its drug, Humira. Cramer believed the company could sustain its dividend and saw two drugs whose combined sales could eventually exceed Humira’s peak. It would take time for those sales to materialize.

Methodology

We selected 10 dividend-paying companies that Jim Cramer identified on Mad Money as Charitable Trust holdings and discussed favorably. We gave the most weight to each company’s record of maintaining its regular dividend through difficult periods and its ability to fund the payment. For non-financial companies, we compared cash dividends paid with operating cash flow after capital expenditures over the same reporting period. For financial stocks, we examined earnings and regulatory capital. Where payment records and coverage were comparable, we favored the higher indicated yield. Each yield uses four payments at the latest declared quarterly rate and excludes special dividends. We listed the stocks in ascending order of the hedge fund sentiment of each stock, according to Insider Monkey’s Q2 database of over 1000 hedge funds.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 612% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 375 percentage points (see more details here).

Jim Cramer’s Top 10 Dividend Stocks for Safe, Consistent Returns

10. Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 53

Dividend Yield as of November 9: 4.57%

Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB) has paid a dividend for 92 consecutive years. In January, the maker of Huggies and Kleenex raised its quarterly payment from $1.26 to $1.28 per share, its 54th consecutive annual increase. Cramer mentioned in October that he had started buying too early, but he still saw a reason to buy more. On October 30, he identified Kimberly-Clark as the Charitable Trust’s newest consumer staples holding.

The Kenvue acquisition makes that long dividend record harder to assess today. In the nine months through September, Kimberly-Clark’s operating cash flow, including discontinued operations, exceeded capital spending and cash dividends by just $101 million. The company completed the acquisition on November 2. Shareholders buying at the highest yield on this list have a long history of annual raises to draw on, but the first full quarter of combined results will give them a better measure of how comfortably the enlarged business can afford its dividend.

9. Cardinal Health, Inc. (NYSE:CAH)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 63

Dividend Yield as of November 9: 0.75%

Cardinal Health, Inc.’s (NYSE:CAH) 2026 dividend increase was small, taking its quarterly payment from $0.5107 to $0.5158 per share. Cramer identified the drug distributor as a Charitable Trust holding in July. By September, he was drawing attention to what set Cardinal apart from McKesson and Cencora.

Cardinal’s cash-flow statement makes a stronger case for dividend safety than the size of the raise. In the quarter ended September 30, the company reported approximately $1.4 billion in operating cash flow, spent $157 million on property and equipment, and paid $126 million in common dividends. The operating figure already reflected $338 million of litigation-related payments that management added back in its adjusted measure. Even with those payments included, Cardinal could fund both its capital spending and its dividend with significant cash to spare.