Dividend Aristocrat S&P Global (SPGI), the parent company of S&P Dow Jones Indices (maintaining the S&P500 Dividend Aristocrats Index) will raise its quarterly dividend by 17.5 percent to $0.67 per share in the first quarter of 2020. This follows a 14.0 percent dividend hike last year and marks the 47th consecutive year of annual dividend increases.

The dividend will be payable on March 11, 2020, to shareholders of record on February 26, 2020. The new annualized dividend rate of $2.68 per share yields 0.9% at a stock price of $293.73 for S&P Global.

The company formerly known as McGraw Hill Financial will now pay an estimated annual dividend of $646 million to its shareholders.

"Increasing the dividend demonstrates our confidence and optimism in the continued strength of our cash flow generation and financial position," said Douglas L. Peterson, President and CEO of S&P Global in the company's press release announcing this new dividend hike. "Returning cash to shareholders remains a cornerstone of our shareholder value proposition. In 2019, we returned $1.8 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases."

S&P Global has announced a double digit dividend hike in each of the last four years with a 22.0 percent dividend increase announced in 2018 as the company's biggest hike in the last decade. The smallest dividend hike in the last ten years was 2.0 percent, announced in 2012 as McGraw Hill Financial.

S&P Global Inc., formerly McGraw Hill Financial, Inc., is a provider of credit ratings, benchmarks and analytics in the global capital and commodity markets.  The capital markets include asset managers, investment banks, commercial banks, insurance companies, exchanges, trading firms and issuers; and the commodity markets include producers, traders and intermediaries within energy, petrochemicals, metals and agriculture. The company's four reportable segments are: S&P Global Ratings, S&P Global Market Intelligence, S&P Dow Jones Indices and S&P Global Platts. The company has paid a dividend each year since 1937.