Daniel Foelber, The Motley Fool
Wed, April 15, 2026 astatine 5:45 AM CDT 4 min read
The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) has go acold much concentrated successful tech-focused maturation companies, galore of which person debased yields oregon don't wage dividends. The changing creation of the scale has compressed the S&P 500 dividend output to conscionable 1.2%, down from astir 2% a decennary ago.
Investors looking for stocks to boost their passive income person travel to the close place. Kimberly-Clark (NASDAQ: KMB) -- a starring user staples institution -- has raised its dividend for 54 consecutive years. That makes Kimberly-Clark 1 of 60 companies that person paid and raised their dividends for astatine slightest 50 consecutive years -- known arsenic Dividend Kings. But Kimberly-Clark's dividend way grounds extends acold beyond that clip frame, arsenic the institution has paid a dividend for 92 consecutive years -- a streak that predates the archetypal FM vigor broadcast and the invention of the microwave oven.
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Here's wherefore Kimberly-Clark is 1 of the champion worth stocks for income investors to bargain successful April.
Kimberly-Clark's output has soared to 5.3% owed to a operation of accordant dividend raises and its falling banal price. The sell-off has gone from atrocious to worse, and Kimberly-Clark is present hovering astir a 12-year low.
Sales maturation and nett margins are nether unit owed to rising costs and anemic user spending. But dissimilar immoderate high-yield stocks with falling net that indispensable usage indebtedness to money their payouts, Kimberly-Clark continues to make plentifulness of operating currency travel to enactment its semipermanent superior spending plans, dividend, and stock repurchases.
Kimberly-Clark's payout ratio is elevated, but its net inactive transcend its dividend payment. Free currency travel (FCF) is hardly beneath the dividend expense, and that's adjacent erstwhile factoring successful a important alteration successful FCF successful caller years, amplified by a astir $200 cardinal summation successful input costs successful fiscal 2025, chiefly owed to tariff-related headwinds.
The bully quality is that Kimberly-Clark expects margins to improve, with integrated maturation accelerating successful the 2nd fractional of 2026. Management besides acceptable its extremity to scope astatine slightest 40% gross margins by the extremity of the decade.
What's more, the banal is ungraded cheap, trading astatine conscionable 16 times trailing-12-month net and 12.9 times guardant earnings.
Kimberly-Clark is simply a textbook illustration of however large companies tin spell from inexpensive to bargain-bin territory erstwhile aggregate factors magnify capitalist uncertainty. In Kimberly-Clark's case, the sectorwide sell-off successful user staples, inflationary outgo pressures owed successful portion to precocious lipid prices, anemic user spending owed to cost-of-living increases, and uncertainty astir Kimberly-Clark's Kenvue acquisition (expected to adjacent successful the 2nd fractional of 2026) springiness short-term-minded investors aggregate excuses to merchantability the stock.

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