Which Dividend King Is the Better Dividend Stock: Colgate-Palmolive (CL) or Emerson Electric (EMR)

Calling all income investors! Two dividend kinds deserve your attention in 2025: Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL) and Emerson Electric (NYSE:EMR). As we’ll discover today, these are profitable businesses that could hold up well and deliver decent dividends regardless of fluctuations in the economy.

Not every business deserves to be called a dividend king, mind you. Among other characteristics, a true dividend king ought to deliver consistent quarterly cash distributions to the shareholders.

At the same time, a dividend king should be on firm financial ground so there’s little to no chance of an imminent dividend cut. So, now’s a great time to compare Colgate-Palmolive and Emerson Electric to determine which one belongs in your income-focused portfolio.

Two Large-Caps to Keep an Eye On

It takes all kinds of companies to keep the world running. Today, we’re focusing on a business that helps you stay clean and a firm that enables businesses to keep their machines in operation.

Colgate-Palmolive’s brands include Colgate toothpaste, Palmolive dishwasher detergent, Irish Spring soap, and Speed Stick deodorant. Since you might be familiar with these brands, investing in CL stock should be an easy choice for safety-seeking investors.

But again, it takes many different kinds of companies to make the world run. A good example would be Emerson Electric, which could be described as an industrial machinery and technology firm. Emerson Electric produces valves, tools, software, and a wide variety of other important products for businesses.

It’s hard to imagine that Colgate-Palmolive or Emerson Electric would collapse even if the economy struggles this year. These are both “steady Eddie” businesses that get-rich-slowly investors should keep an eye on.

Gradual Growth Is Fine

To be dividend kings, Colgate-Palmolive and Emerson Electric would need to have solid fundamentals so they can continue to pay out their quarterly distributions. As it turns out, both of these companies are fundamentally sound.

Checking the most recently available data, we can see that in 2025’s first quarter, Colgate-Palmolive grew its organic sales by 1.4% year over year. For the full year, Colgate-Palmolive expects its organic sales to increase 2% to 4%.

In addition, Colgate-Palmolive improved its Q1 2025 earnings per share (EPS) by 2% to $0.85. The company achieved this even while Colgate-Palmolive CEO Noel Wallace acknowledged “very difficult market conditions worldwide.”

Meanwhile, Emerson Electric grew its net sales 1% year over year in this year’s first quarter; the company also increased its adjusted EPS by 13% to $1.38. Looking ahead to the full year, Emerson Electric anticipates 2025 net sales growth in the range of 1.5% to 3.5%.

You won’t necessarily see these results on the front page of the financial  headlines. However, there’s nothing wrong with gradual sales and profit growth. Colgate-Palmolive and Emerson Electric supply products that people and businesses need year-round, and they have no identifiable reasons to slash their dividends anytime soon.

Respectable Value and Yield

While it’s not strictly necessary for a dividend king to trade at a reasonable valuation, it’s still a nice bonus. After all, yield seekers shouldn’t chase overpriced stocks.

Using the trailing 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, we’ll observe that Colgate-Palmolive comes in at 26.75x while Emerson Electric stands at 29.66x. Therefore, both of these businesses appear to be reasonably valued — not too high, but also not so low that you’ll wonder if the stock is crashing.

Turning to the main topic today, we’ll find that Colgate-Palmolive offers a forward annual dividend yield of 2.21%. This beats Emerson Electric’s 2% dividend yield, though both of these yields are respectable.

There’s one thing I need to mention here, though. Emerson Electric has a quarterly report coming up on May 7. Thus, you’ll want to stay tuned since the company could announce significant changes on that day.

That said, I wouldn’t lose sleep at night worrying about whether Emerson Electric’s board will declare a dividend cut. This seems unlikely, frankly. At this point, if your primary focus is superior yield, you could choose to buy some CL shares and also buy a lesser number of EMR shares.

Finally, this analysis wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t touch upon the topic of share-price performance. Over the past five years, Colgate-Palmolive stock lived up to its “stead Eddie” reputation, providing gains of around 31% if we excluded dividends.

In contrast, Emerson Electric stock rallied by around 95% over the past five years. Consequently, EMR stock might appeal to momentum traders more than CL stock.

With all of that in mind, we can’t really call one of these dividend kings “better” than the other. If momentum is your priority, you might buy more Emerson Electric shares.

Alternatively, you could buy more Colgate-Palmolive shares if you want a bigger dividend yield. Either way, CL stock and EMR stock can both earn a place in your diversified, income-oriented portfolio this year.

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