The Best Dividend Stock On Earth Makes Even More Sense Today Than Ever. Here’s Why.

24/7 Wall St. Key Points:

• Altria (NYSE: MO) offers a 7% dividend yield and is up 12% YTD, positioning it as a flight-to-safety asset in a potentially declining market.
• With 59 dividend increases over 55 years and resilient revenue from both traditional and alternative tobacco products, Altria demonstrates exceptional dividend reliability.
• Its ownership stake in Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD) and iconic Marlboro brand add diversification and global brand strength to its income and value proposition.
• The right dividend stocks provide income, and appreciation to hit your financial dreams. Check out our top picks here. If you want to grow your dividend income, it’d be crazy not to take a look. Click here now.

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Transcript:

[00:00:04] Doug McIntyre: Let’s go to my favorite dividend stock from Altria. I’m gonna talk about Altria again and I’m gonna talk about it ’cause the market is in trouble. And I think because of consumer confidence, sort of inflation may be reigniting itself. You could see a sell down of another 10% in the market.

[00:00:26] Doug McIntyre: If, you said to me, Doug, is it gonna happen? My reaction would be it could happen. Absolutely. So let’s take a look at Altria for a second. Alright. Okay. Altria right now has a 7% yield. Okay. That’s a lot. Number one. Number two, the stock is up 12% this year.

[00:00:49] Doug McIntyre: Okay. We’re S&P. The last time I looked was probably down 4%.

[00:00:54] Lee Jackson: So at least, especially after today.

[00:00:58] Doug McIntyre: So as far as this is a flight to safety, people don’t talk about that anymore?

[00:01:04] Lee Jackson: No.

[00:01:04] Doug McIntyre: You don’t hear that term anymore? Probably ’cause the market, has been going up every. Stay for what seems like a century. It’s obviously not that long, but

[00:01:14] Lee Jackson: No, but you’re right.

[00:01:15] Doug McIntyre: if you wanna look for stocks that are flight to safety stocks, Altria should be first on your list. It is what you would call a dividend king. It’s raised, its,

[00:01:27] Lee Jackson: it is over 50 years, right? Right. 59 or something. Yeah.

[00:01:32] Doug McIntyre: It’s raised, its, dividend 59 times in 55 years. That’s a lot. And it’s a sin stock, which, if you can swallow the fact that it sells cigarettes and Marlboro’s, it’s biggest brand, if that’s not a problem for you, you’ve got a stock that if, we have a couple of rough years in the market, in the economy.

[00:01:58] Doug McIntyre: People smoke in during recessions. Right. It’s just, it probably started, some people started smoking during recessions.

[00:02:09] Doug McIntyre: But if, you’re looking for a company where the stock price is going up now, could well continue to go up as you have the, a flight to safety and where the dividend is rock solid.

[00:02:21] Lee Jackson: Oh, absolutely.

[00:02:22] Doug McIntyre: This is a company cashflow’s gonna stay great. Manufacturing cigarettes is not expensive. Nope. You have a customer base that you know, and it’s interesting, these guys are still good at getting young people to start smoking. Now, maybe that’s not a good thing for the society and the people, but their sales are not dropping.

[00:02:46] Doug McIntyre: The revenue at Altria is not going down. It’s not as if the smoking public has decided they’re all gonna throw their cigarettes away, that the people were gonna throw their cigarettes away. Already did it.

[00:02:58] Lee Jackson: I think you’re right. I think you’re right. And, when we were growing up and we were teenagers and in our twenties, I mean, cigarette smoking was, just a part of the lexicon.

[00:03:14] Lee Jackson: It was part of life. He smoked on airplanes and smoked everywhere, smoked in stores, and that’s gone away. But the, I think for the younger people, it’s almost, it’s a lot more daring for them to smoke cigarettes today than it was for us to smoke them in 1972. And Altria has been smart and focused on, they have a big vape business.

[00:03:40] Lee Jackson: And vaping, although, which can be dangerous, is certainly safer than smoking. And they have these cigs that burn, but they don’t burn. They’re non burn cigarettes and they have those, and of course they’re really big on oral sort of pouches packs and things of that where people can dip, the equivalent of dipping without having to actually, put the, dip in your, cheek.

[00:04:05] Lee Jackson: So, and like we always like to mention to our viewers, they own still about almost 9% of Anheuser-Busch InBev and, they still sell a lot of beer despite what happened with Bud Light. So, I mean, that’s the perfect, it’s the perfect one two punch for the quote Sin Stock.

[00:04:24] Doug McIntyre: And it has the greatest, best known brand in the world.

[00:04:29] Doug McIntyre: Oh, absolutely. It has Marlboro, which is probably a century old. It’s, listen, they don’t, for some reason they don’t put it on brand valuation lists anymore. Maybe they just, it’s too embarrassing. But when it was on brand valuation lists, it was generally in the top 10 globally. Oh absolutely. It was, sort of up there, with places like Walmart (NYSE: WMT), they still owned the cigarette brand in the world.

[00:04:58] Doug McIntyre: Yeah, it really is. That’s irreplaceable.

[00:05:01] Lee Jackson: Yeah, it still is. And that was the kind of American cigarette that, that people wanted to buy for years and they continued to do it. And again, like you said, I mean sales have remained steady, but the alternative products are gonna be there. And smoking in Asia and smoking in Europe or Italy, it’s just not frowned upon that much.

[00:05:28] Lee Jackson: They don’t care.

[00:05:29] Doug McIntyre: No.

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