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Our Favorite Dividend-Growth Funds and ETFs

While their yields aren't especially high, these funds look good from the bottom up.

Note: This article is part of Morningstar's Guide to Dividend and Income Investing special report. A version of this article appeared in July 2015.

Investors in search of dividend-focused mutual funds will quickly hit a fork in the road.

In one direction are offerings that aim to deliver a yield that's high in absolute terms. To do so, many such funds emphasize high(er)-yielding sectors like REITs, utilities, and consumer-defensive stocks like tobacco providers. Bank stocks were also a reliable source of above-market yields for years, until many cut their dividends during the financial crisis.

In the other direction are dividend-focused funds that employ dividend-growth strategies, meaning they focus on companies that have a history of increasing their dividends. Such funds often carry the words "dividend growth" or "dividend appreciation" in their names. For income-focused investors, bypassing dividend-growth funds and ETFs and heading toward those with higher payouts might look like the obvious way to go. Yields on dividend-growth strategies are underwhelming and may even be lower than what you could obtain with a broad-market or S&P 500 index fund. Yields on income-focused equity funds, by contrast, may top 3%. That may not sound like a lot, but the S&P is currently yielding less than 2%.

But there are a few key reasons to consider a dividend-growth offering instead. One is that companies with the wherewithal to increase their dividends over a period of years--specific requirements vary by fund--generally have sustainable competitive advantages, or what Morningstar calls a moat. For example, 62% of the companies in

Highly leveraged, lower-quality companies often perform well during market rallies, but that may not always be the case. In an equity sell-off, the high-quality companies that are prominent in dividend-growth funds would likely hold up better than higher-yielding but lower-quality firms. In 2008, for example,

In addition, dividend-growth offerings may be less affected by rising interest rates than would be high-yielding equity funds. The reason is that when bond yields rise, investors often jettison other, more risky sources of yield. Why venture out on the risk spectrum--especially today as rates are poised to climb--when safer bonds are hitting the market with higher yields attached to them? That helps explain why, as bond yields have risen over the past year, yield-rich sectors like REITs and utilities have felt the pain. In contrast, yields on dividend growers tend to be more modest; they should be less affected by interest-rate fluctuations because investors weren't really looking to them for current income.

The catch with dividend-growth stocks, of course, is that they won't tend to do the job for investors in search of current income. Instead, they're best used as part of a total-return strategy, where the investor periodically rebalances to shake off cash flow from the portfolio. (That's the basic strategy in place for my model Bucket Retirement portfolios.)

Investors in search of dividend-growth funds can take their pick among index funds, exchange-traded funds, and actively managed offerings. Here are some of Morningstar's favorites.

Category: Large Blend | Analyst Rating: Gold

It seems that no matter what factors we screen for--whether quality, low costs, or reasonable volatility--this fund makes it through. In keeping with the fund's name, manager Donald Kilbride of Wellington Management looks for reasonably priced companies that can grow their dividends by inflation plus 3%. The end result is a sturdy, high-quality portfolio. The fund's asset base had nearly quadrupled within five years, prompting Vanguard to close the fund's doors to new investors in July 2016. While the fund is still accepting new dollars from existing fundholders, Vanguard said the "soft close" was driven by a desire to protect the manager's ability to deliver superior results for current shareholders.

Category: Large Blend | Analyst Rating: Silver

While not quite as cheap as the Vanguard offering, this fund has several similar selling points. Manager Tom Huber has been at T. Rowe for 24 years and has run this fund for the past 17; like Kilbride, he favors financially healthy companies. Although the fund's share of wide-moat stocks isn't as large as the Vanguard fund's and it didn't hold up quite as well during the 2008 market downturn, its volatility level, as measured by standard deviation, is comfortably below the S&P 500's over every trailing time period.

Category: Large Value | Analyst Rating: Bronze

Although its lead manager is different, this Wellington-managed advisor-sold fund is under the umbrella of the same "quality value" team that oversees Vanguard Dividend Growth. That team's head, Ed Bousa, steers this fund while also overseeing the equity component of

Category: Large Blend | Analyst Rating: Gold

Whereas the previous three offerings are all actively managed, this is an index product that's available either as a traditional index fund or as an exchange-traded fund. It tracks an index of companies that have raised their dividends in each of the past 10 years, a construction method that leaves it heavy on wide-moat firms, which take up nearly 62% of the portfolio. The portfolio tends to be heavy on consumer-defensive and industrial names, while downplaying traditionally dividend-rich sectors like utilities and REITs. In part because its expense ratio is so low, its yield is consistently among the highest.

Category: Large Value | Analyst Rating: Silver

While most dividend-focused funds employ either a dividend-growth strategy or a focus on yield, this offering falls between the two camps. It focuses on durable, high-quality companies with dividend yields, but it doesn't reach into distressed, deep-value territory. It's even cheaper than Vanguard Dividend Appreciation, with a 0.07% expense ratio. It's a solid one-stop option for investors in search of exposure to dividend-paying stocks.

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