We recently published a list of the 15 Best Dividend Aristocrat Stocks with Over 3% Yield. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) stands against other best dividend aristocrats with a high yield.
Dividend Aristocrats are the companies that have raised their payouts for 25 consecutive years or more. Dividends have been an important part of the overall market return for a very long time. According to a report by S&P Global, dividends have represented approximately 31% of the total return of the broader market from 1926 to February 2025, while capital appreciation has accounted for 69%.
Growing dividends consistently highlight the companies’ confidence in their firms’ prospects as market participants see this as a sign of corporate maturity and strong balance sheets. Dividend aristocrats reveal characteristics of both capital growth and dividend income, as opposed to alternative income strategies that mainly pay attention to pure yield or pure capital appreciation.
Investors are more inclined toward dividend growth stocks, and the performance of these equities has also remained stable over the years. According to a report by S&P Global, dividend aristocrats have reported higher returns with lower volatility over the long run as compared to the broader market, which eventually resulted in higher risk-adjusted returns.
In addition to dividend growth, dividend yield is also an important component of total return. The ability to increase dividends does not come at the expense of lower yields; in fact, the dividend aristocrats index has consistently delivered higher yields than its benchmark. The index had dividend yields within the range of 2.0% to 2.8% over the 28-year period, as reported by S&P Global. Moreover, the average dividend yield of the index was 2.5%, compared with a 1.8% dividend yield of the broader market.
As highlighted above, dividend aristocrats have shown lower volatility as compared to the broader market index. Their ability to provide downside protection can be seen in the upside and downside capture ratios. The S&P report highlighted that the dividend aristocrats index has outperformed the market index 66.67% of the time in down months and 43.88% of the time in up months. Notably, the index also has a lower drawdown level compared with the benchmark index. In addition, the dividend aristocrats index provided an average excess return of 0.87% in down months over the broader market. To further emphasize their low volatility, the report mentioned that the dividend aristocrats had a market beta of 0.8 between December 29, 1989, and February 28, 2025.
With the AI boom and tech stocks taking center stage, dividend stocks are somehow overlooked by the market. However, the recent market sell-off has restored their importance, as the Dividend Aristocrats Index has surged by over 2% since the start of 2025, compared with a nearly 5% decline in the broader market. The significance of these equities is much more apparent over long periods of time. According to the S&P Global report, the dividend aristocrats index outperformed its benchmark by an average of 1.59% per year between January 2000 and February 2025. This outperformance was because of the fundamental characteristics of the constituents of the index.
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Our Methodology
For this article, we scanned a list of the Dividend Aristocrat index, which tracks the performance of companies that have raised their payouts for 25 consecutive years or more. From that list, we picked 15 stocks with dividend yields above 3%, as of March 29. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of their dividend yields.
At Insider Monkey, we are obsessed with 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. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC)
Dividend Yield as of March 29: 3.48%
Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) is an American industrial supplies company, based in Georgia. The company mainly specializes in automotive and industrial replacement parts. In the past 12 months, the stock has declined by over 23% as the company faces challenges due to slow industrial production in the US. In addition, the decline in the sales of replacement automotive parts has also taken a toll on the stock’s price. However, GPC has rebounded slightly in 2025, surging by over 2% so far.
In addition, Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC)’s earnings also came in strong. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the company reported a revenue of $5.77 billion, which saw a 3.3% growth from the same quarter last year. The revenue also surpassed analysts’ estimates by $57.6 million. The company reported a gross profit of $2.1 billion, which represented 35.9% of total sales. GPC’s net income for the quarter came in at $133 million, which translated into $0.96 per diluted share.
Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) is a strong dividend payer, boasting a healthy balance sheet with solid cash generation. In FY24, the company reported an operating cash flow of $1.3 billion, and its free cash flow amounted to $684 million. In addition, it also returned $705 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. The company’s quarterly dividend sits at $1.03 per share for a dividend yield of 3.48%, as of March 29. It is one of the best dividend aristocrat stocks on our list, as the company has been raising its payouts for 69 consecutive years, holding one of the longest streaks in the market.
Overall, GPC ranks 7th on our list of the best dividend aristocrat stocks. While we acknowledge the potential of GPC as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued dividend stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued dividend stock that is more promising than GPC but that trades at 10 times its earnings and grows its earnings at double digit rates annually, check out our report about the dirt cheap dividend stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
