Canada’s Next Dividend Growth Stars? A Sneak Peek at 2026 Candidates
MP Market Review - September 5, 2025
Summary
Welcome to this week’s MP Market Review – your go-to source for insights and updates on the Canadian dividend growth companies we track on The List! While we’ve expanded our watchlists to include U.S. companies, The List-USA, our Canadian lineup remains the cornerstone of our coaching approach.
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Your journey to dividend growth mastery starts here – let’s dive in!
Last week, dividend growth of The List stayed the same with an average return of +6.9% YTD (income).
Last week, the price of The List was up from the previous week with an average return of +11.3% YTD (capital).
Last week, there were no dividend announcements from companies on The List.
Last week, there were two earnings reports from companies on The List.
This week, no companies from The List will report on earnings.
DGI Clipboard
“If you look for companies that can raise their dividends year after year without milking operations, you will automatically be lead to high quality stocks.”
- Edmund Faltermayer, Fortune magazine, October 1990
Canada’s Next Dividend Growth Stars? A Sneak Peek at 2026 Candidates
Intro
The List has kicked off 2025 on a strong note, rising more than 11% year-to-date in our equal-weighted example that we track weekly in the newsletter. We use the Canadian version of The List to demonstrate our dividend growth investing (DGI) process in action.
It is important to emphasize that The List is not a portfolio. It is a coaching tool. While many of the companies on The List do eventually find their way into our model DGI portfolios, its primary purpose is to guide decision-making, not to serve as a ready-made portfolio. The same principle applies to our U.S. version, The List (USA).
Long-time subscribers will recall the process we go through each January when curating our watchlists for the year ahead. In addition to applying our four key criteria for identifying quality dividend growers, we follow a disciplined approach: additions or removals occur only once per year, on January 1.
Around this time of year, we begin looking ahead to identify new candidates for potential inclusion.
Identifying Potential Candidates
We’ve identified four companies on the TSX that will soon meet our first two criteria for inclusion on The List:
Dividend Growth Streak: At least 10 years.
Market Cap: Minimum of one billion dollars.
Evaluating Candidates
When deciding who stays and who goes, we apply two additional criteria:
Diversification: We limit it to five companies per sector, preferably two per industry.
Cyclicality: We exclude REITs and pure-play energy companies due to their high cyclicality.
Analysis
Industrials: Both Badger Infrastructure Solutions and StorageVault Canada are Industrials. Since the current version of The List already includes five companies in this sector, these candidates face an uphill battle to replace one of the existing dividend growth powerhouses.
Financial Services: TMX Group Limited also has strong credentials, but the Financial Services sector of The List is already highly competitive.
Utilities: Hydro One Limited is a regulated utility and stands out because there is still room for one more utility company on The List. This gives Hydro One a leg up, but it must still compete against other candidates that were left out last year.
In case you were wondering, here were the finalists who did not make The List last year that will be in the mix again this year.
Looking Ahead
At a minimum, we know that Bell Canada will be removed from The List in 2026 following its recent dividend cut. This ensures at least one opening, and we will review all candidates in detail in late December when we publish the new watchlists for 2026.
Takeaway
One of our guiding principles is to keep our watchlists to fewer than 30 stocks. This focused approach allows us to monitor each company closely, avoid unnecessary noise from the broader market, and develop a deeper understanding of the businesses we may invest in.
By following this disciplined process, we continue to refine our watchlists as new companies meet our criteria and prepare ourselves for attractive opportunities in dividend growth investing.
If you like one of the companies above and would like me to consider it for the 2026 version, please send me a brief note explaining your reasons. Your feedback is appreciated.
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DGI Scorecard
The List (2025)
The Magic Pants 2025 list includes 29 Canadian dividend growth stocks. Here are the criteria to be considered a candidate on The List:
Dividend growth streak: 10 years or more.
Market cap: Minimum one billion dollars.
Diversification: Limit of five companies per sector, preferably two per industry.
Cyclicality: Exclude REITs and pure-play energy companies due to high cyclicality.
Based on these criteria, companies are added or removed from The List annually on January 1. Prices and dividends are updated weekly.
The List is not a portfolio but a coaching tool that helps us think about ideas and risk manage our model portfolio. We own some but not all the companies on The List. In other words, we might want to buy these companies when valuation looks attractive.
Our newsletter provides readers with a comprehensive insight into the implementation and advantages of our dividend growth investing strategy. This evidence-based, unbiased approach empowers DIY investors to outperform both actively managed dividend funds and passively managed indexes and dividend ETFs over longer-term horizons.
Note: In the last week of every month, I will show the updated watchlist for our American dividend growers, The List-USA. It will be shown after the Canadian watchlist below.
Performance of 'The List'
Last week, dividend growth stayed the same, with an average return of +6.9% YTD (income).
The price of 'The List' was up from the previous week, with an average YTD return of +11.3% (capital).
Even though prices may fluctuate, the dependable growth in our income does not. Stay the course. You will be happy you did.
Last week's best performers on 'The List' were Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (ATD-T), up +9.52%.; Franco Nevada (FNV-N), up +2.89%; and Stella-Jones Inc. (SJ-T) up +2.51%.
Enghouse Systems Limited (ENGH-T) was the worst performer last week, down -8.40%.
From breaking news to quarterly earnings reports, we break down the week’s biggest headlines to help you make sense of the market. The full newsletter has even more insights and analysis, don’t miss out!
