PEA stocks that actually raise their dividend yearly

2026-09-15 · By Lubin Danilo, founder of Lubin Investment

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Paying a dividend is not the same thing as growing it. I checked, payment by payment, the real record of every PEA-eligible stock my quality filter rates well. UCB has raised it without interruption for sixteen years. Cegedim, meanwhile, paid one single dividend in eleven years, at half the old rate, with no promise of another.

Paying a dividend is not the same as growing it

Search for "growing dividend PEA stock" and you quickly land on lists that tick a single box: did the company pay shareholders anything this year? That box says nothing about how reliable the payment is, or where it is headed. A company that pays half a euro per share this year, after eleven years of silence, ticks the exact same box as one that has raised its dividend without interruption for sixteen years.

I wanted to check, payment by payment, which PEA-eligible stocks my quality filter rates well actually deliver on what "growing dividend" promises. Not the smoothed five-year average most sites display, which can hide a crash followed by a rebound behind a number that looks positive, but the full year-by-year record.

A quick reminder for anyone new to this: the PEA (Plan d'Epargne en Actions) is a French tax wrapper that exempts capital gains and dividends from income tax after five years of holding, on the condition that the company's registered office stays within the European Union or the European Economic Area. I already covered that rule and its recent update in my article on the PEA-PME reform, and crossed that filter with valuation in my ranking of undervalued PEA stocks. Here the question is different: among these eligible stocks, which ones truly grow their dividend, and which ones just pay one from time to time?

My method: the full record, not a five-year average

The "5-year dividend growth" field most screeners display is a compound annual average between two points: the value five years ago and today's value. The problem is that average says nothing about the path in between. A stock that cut its dividend in half and then more than doubled it since will show the same positive average growth as one that simply raised it by 8% every year, without a single hiccup. The two have nothing in common as an income holding.

So for every PEA-eligible stock my filter rates 8 out of 10 or better, I pulled the full payment history available on my platform (going back to the year 2000 for some), grouped payments made in the same calendar year (some companies pay an interim installment and a final one on different dates), then checked, year by year, whether the total rose, stayed flat, or fell. I stopped at payments made through 2025: several stocks showed what looked like a drop for 2026, which turned out, on closer inspection, to be an incomplete payment for the year still in progress, not a real cut.

Within this scope, a good share of the names that come out well rated by my filter quickly move past the strict PEA-PME cap (2 billion euros in market capitalization since the 2024 reform): it is mostly large, established European stocks, more stable in their payout policy, that dominate this particular ranking. That is not a methodology bias, it is a real finding: dividend consistency is built over decades of financial discipline, a luxury that young, fast-growing companies generally do not have yet.

The ranking: who actually raises it, without a break

Here, from the longest unbroken record to the shortest, are the PEA-eligible stocks my filter rates 8 out of 10 or better that truly raised their paid dividend, year after year, through 2025.

Two records already extend one exercise further, confirmed after my data cutoff: UCB had a dividend of 1.45 euros per share approved at its annual general meeting on April 30, 2026, a 4% increase over 2025, confirmed by UCB itself, which brings its streak to 17 years. Edenred, for its part, claims a sixth consecutive increase with the payment announced for 2026. At the other end of the table, JCDecaux shows the limit of this exercise: its dividend, suspended from 2020 to 2024, only resumed in 2025, still below its 2019 level, before a real increase arrived in 2026. A zero in my table does not mean the stock is bad, only that its streak of raises has just restarted from scratch.

One detail deserves a public correction: in the article I dedicated to UCB back in June, I stated 25 consecutive years of increases. This new systematic pass over the raw record finds only 16 without a strict break through 2025, with a flat year, not a cut, in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis. The difference likely comes down to the exact definition used by my source at the time, which may have counted a flat year as a raise or started from a different reference year. I would rather correct the record than let two different figures circulate on the same site.

Edenred: the increases resumed, the price is still reasonable

Edenred issues meal vouchers and payment solutions for businesses, such as Ticket Restaurant. The mechanism behind how Edenred actually makes money is less obvious than it looks: the client company credits its employees' accounts at the start of the month, but employees spend that amount gradually at partner merchants, day after day. Between the moment Edenred receives the money and the moment the merchant collects it, the company temporarily holds funds that are not quite its own yet: this float mechanism, common to any business that manages deferred payments, generates a financial income on top of the fee charged on every transaction.

That model also explains why 2020 hurt: restaurants closed during lockdowns, furloughed employees no longer spending their vouchers, and Edenred cut its dividend by about 19%, from 0.86 euros to 0.70 euros per share. Since then, the recovery has been clear and documented by the company itself: five consecutive raises through 2025, a sixth already claimed for 2026, a rise of more than 90% since the low point.

The price, meanwhile, stays reasonable. Edenred trades today at 6.6 times its free cash flow, the cash actually left over once bills are paid, a low multiple for a company my filter rates 9 out of 10. My fair buy price model, which projects cash per share five years out rather than trusting a single day's multiple, comes out at $41.95 against a current price of $28.55, a discount of roughly 47%. With a payout ratio of only 65% of cash generated, the company keeps room to keep raising this dividend without putting its investments at risk.

Euronext: the raises continue, the price no longer does

Not to be confused with Euronext Athens Holding, its Greek subsidiary already mentioned in my PEA-PME article: Euronext N.V. is the parent company, listed in Paris, which operates the exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Dublin, Milan and Oslo. An exchange earns money two complementary ways: a fee on every executed transaction, variable and dependent on trading volume, and a recurring subscription for real-time market data access, sold to banks, funds and trading platforms, more stable and predictable. That second revenue stream explains much of the dividend's consistency.

The dividend paid rose six years in a row between 2020 and 2025, from 1.45 to 2.90 euros per share, nearly doubling in five years. A seventh raise is already confirmed for 2026: 3.18 euros per share, up 9.8%, officially announced by Euronext, which pays out half its net profit to shareholders as a stated policy.

The price, on the other hand, is no longer a bargain. Euronext trades at 23.8 times its free cash flow, and my model puts the fair buy price at $57.54 against a current price of $157.70, meaning the stock trades roughly 64% above what I consider a safe entry point. This is exactly the kind of situation where quality and price tell two different stories: a company that has raised its dividend without fail for six years is not automatically a buying opportunity today. Quality and price stay two separate judgments in my method, always.

Cegedim: the trap that yield alone never sees

Cegedim is a French health data and technology company, listed on Euronext Paris, rated 8 out of 10 by my filter. Search for "PEA stocks that pay a dividend" in a basic screener and it shows up today, because it paid 0.50 euros per share in 2022. That is exactly where the trap closes: this kind of filter never asks since when, or whether it will happen again.

The real record tells a very different story. From 2000 to 2011, Cegedim did raise its dividend every year, from 0.33 to 1.00 euro per share. Then nothing for eleven years. The 2022 payment, the one a screener picks up today, is not a resumption of growth: it is a one-off payment, at half the last amount paid in 2011, and nothing has been paid since.

Cegedim says so itself on its investor page: the group "does not plan to pay regular cash dividends," a decision that remains at the discretion of its board of directors depending on results, available cash, and loan covenants. This is not a solvency problem stated publicly, it is a deliberate choice not to commit to a regular payout policy, something no yield figure shown at a given moment can ever reveal.

How to check this yourself before you buy

Three habits are enough. First, look for the "dividend history" page on the company's investor relations site, often more complete in English than in other languages, rather than the single yield your broker displays. Second, count the years one by one instead of trusting a 5-year average: a flat year or a cut easily hides behind a positive average figure.

Finally, look for an explicit statement about the company's policy, often in the annual report or the "shareholders" page: some formally commit to raising their dividend every year, like UCB or Edenred, which both document their own record on their site, others, like Cegedim, clearly warn they will not. That sentence, more than the amount of the last payment, tells you what to expect next year. My full screener and my methodology detail how I build the quality score out of 10 that serves as the first filter before this kind of manual check.

• UCB shows the longest unbroken record in this ranking: 16 verified years through 2025, 17 counting the raise already approved for 2026.
• Edenred cut its dividend by 19% in 2020, then delivered five straight raises through 2025 (a sixth already claimed for 2026), and still trades at a discount of roughly 47% per my model.
• Euronext has raised its paid dividend for six years, but now trades about 64% above my fair buy price: a good company, at the wrong moment.
• Cegedim paid a dividend in 2022 after eleven years of nothing, at half its last amount, and says itself it does not plan on regularity: a displayed yield never tells you since when, or for how long.
• Always check the full year-by-year record on the company's investor relations site rather than a single yield figure or a 5-year average.

FAQ

What is the difference between a dividend that exists and one that grows?

A dividend that "exists" simply means a payment, even a single or old one, took place. A dividend that grows implies a real, and ideally regular, increase, year after year. Most stock screeners do not distinguish the two: they tick the same box for a company that has raised its dividend for 16 years and for one that paid a single dividend in eleven years.

Is the yield shown by my broker enough to judge a dividend's quality?

No. Yield, the annual amount divided by the share price, is a snapshot, not a trajectory. A stock can show a high yield simply because its price fell, or a modest yield while raising its dividend every year for decades, like UCB. You need to look at the full record, not the picture of a single day.

Are all these stocks eligible for the standard PEA, or only the PEA-PME?

Every stock in this ranking is eligible for the standard PEA: its registered office sits within the European Union or the European Economic Area, the only legal condition, regardless of size. Several, like UCB, Allianz or ASML, far exceed the PEA-PME market cap ceiling, set at 2 billion euros since the 2024 reform detailed in my dedicated article.

Where can I check a stock's payment history myself?

Directly on the company's investor relations site, by searching for "dividend history" or "investor relations," which usually publishes a full year-by-year table. That is the most reliable source, more complete than the 5-year summary shown by most brokers and financial aggregators.

Related reading

• Undervalued European quality stocks to buy in 2026?
• Dividends: why our method does not evaluate them
• Is a Stock Expensive? Compare It to Itself

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About the author

Written by Lubin Danilo, founder of Lubin Investment. A self-taught individual investor, I find fundamental analysis fascinating, and it has delivered excellent results. For three years now, my performance has beaten the S&P 500. But analyzing every stock took too much time: sites with incomplete data, calculation methods and criteria never aligned with mine. And spotting the best stocks was just as time-consuming, even with my own well-defined checklist. So I put my software development background to work to build this software, base my investment strategy on its results, and share it with people who share the same passion as me. It judges a company's quality and its price separately, using criteria drawn from the financial literature (Warren Buffett, Michael Mauboussin, Aswath Damodaran).