Most investors have discovered that earning less than 1% per year in short-term Treasuries or even less than 2% out in the 10-year Treasury is no fun. Longer-dated Treasury bonds also are proving that investors are taking on valuation risks they had not considered. So 2012, after 2011, has been a great year for dividend and income oriented investors. Almost every company with earnings quality is hiking its dividend to entice investors to go into stocks rather than Treasuries.

It seems as though there is a belief that the bulk of the big dividend hikes generally come during the first few months of a year, when companies are issuing their new longer-term guidance. That is only partially true, and investors have to know that many dividends get announced in the second half of the year, or even in the final quarter of each year. Now that Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) has really hiked its payout and now that Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) has finally succumbed to our call to begin a big payout, we wanted to see which other big dividend hike expectations should be coming down the pipe between now and the end of 2012.

24/7 Wall St. expects some of these hikes to be significant and some of them may be imminent. Be advised that not every one of these payouts should be chased just because the dividend is on the rise. Some caution might even be prudent in some of these because their implied current dividend yields have contracted with a low-rate or no-rate policy from Ben Bernanke. Many are also at premium P/E ratios now as well.

These are the 12 big dividend hikes expected by 24/7 Wall St. between now and the end of 2012.

Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO) is due to get a dividend hike any time now, particularly since it had a very positive debt tender to lower its cost of capital. Literally it could be in the coming days, if its history is any barometer. We have been shocked at how much investors have chased this one, but our take is that the enthusiasm, until lately, has to be in anticipation that the $0.41 per quarter dividend will go up to $0.44 or even $0.45. Altria has to raise its payout, by our take, because its yield is now only 4.7%. Does it seem fair to get paid the same by Big Tobacco with its sin business (and long-term business risks) as you get from the two largest telecom players in America?

By the way, the old international play via Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE: PM) is due for an imminent dividend hike as well. So far, its dividend hikes have been announced in the first half of September.

American Electric Power Co. (NYSE: AEP) only hiked its dividend 2% last year. But AEP remains very shareholder friendly, is an active lobbying company and is still on our list of favorites if we had to buy a utility stock after the formation of a dividend bubble. The $0.47 per share quarterly hike could be raised to $0.50 per share, for more than a 6% dividend hike, without paying much more than 60% of its earnings out. But it is diversifying away from fossil fuels and has cap-ex costs coming. Perhaps it can jump on the debt refinancing bandwagon to help out its bottom line.It has had three hikes in a row after hitting the hike-pause button during the recession, and AEP has paid a cash dividend on its common stock every quarter since 1910.

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) may be the largest biotech company listed on a stock exchange, but the reality is that Amgen is now more like a pharmaceutical giant which is managing to still grow. The last dividend hike was in December and that went to $0.36 per quarter from $0.28 per quarter. Shares have risen by about one-third since the last dividend hike, so failing to raise the dividend would arguably be a dividend cut for new investors compared to a year ago. Amgen might prefer to pay down part of its $21+ billion in debt, but it may be forced into a hike. One word of caution here: the announcement might come in December but it might not get paid until later on the first quarter of 2013.

Read also: 20 Big Companies Which Don’t Pay Dividends — But Should

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) has had three consecutive quarters of a $0.17 payout. The problem in expecting a dividend hike is that GE has bumped its dividend up four times since June of 2010, and the $0.17 dividend payment of today compares to a peak dividend of $0.31 per quarter from back before the wheels came off the economy. What is different today is that GE is now finally getting a dividend from its finance unit again, and its shares have had a hard time going and staying much above $20.00. If GE is going to bump up its payout, then it is a signal that earnings growth will support paying out 50% of its pretax income.

Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) may be in the defense sector and at risk of austerity measures, but its dividend hike of late 2011 was for a yield of 5.2%. That only screens out as about 4.4% now that shares hit a new 52-week high. In the new age of austerity, the $30 billion defense giant might not be able to take the same 33% dividend hike it took in late 2011, but it is still expected to grow earnings, and that $1.00 quarterly payment may get hiked to $1.10 or $1,15 in the next 45 to 60 days.

Read also: The Case for Cutting the Tax-Free Status of Muni Bonds

McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) has raised its dividend each and every year since paying its first dividend in 1976. It is has a new CEO after a near-decade run higher under high dividend payouts. So its new CEO probably has no choice but to raise the payout here, even if the growth and business trends seem to have peaked. The last $0.70 payout declared was the fourth consecutive dividend paid out a that rate, and this stock has been stuck in the mud after being the best DJIA stock in 2012. Our take is that Mickey D’s will raise the payout to $0.75 per quarter, which will be about half of its expected adjusted earnings in 2013. After all is said and done here, the new CEO needs to show that he is confident about the future, and it is not exactly like the Golden Arches has to reserve as much cap-ex spending for growth like many other businesses.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has now had four consecutive $0.20 payouts per share per quarter, and a dividend hike announcement could come as soon as September. With estimates for its fiscal June 2013 year at $3.02 and a $0.80 annualized payout, that is only about 26% of its adjusted earnings being paid out at the same time that it has a massive cash trove. Depending on its outlook, Microsoft could even decide to do a massive one-time dividend to reward shareholders with only a 15% dividend tax, if that is believed to change substantially in 2013. Its 2.6% dividend yield compares to the 3.4% paid by Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC). Microsoft shareholders would like to see its stock rise back up to $35 and maybe even $40. A more aggressive dividend policy may be what it will take to get there.

Read also: Has Chasing Junk Bond Yields Finally Peaked?

Telecom payouts still beat utilities … We are looking for dividend hikes soon from both AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). With the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 5 less than a month away, how could more dividend hikes not be expected here. AT&T raised its dividend by 2.3% last December, and we would expect that same 2% or so dividend hike to be the case again in 2012 and beyond. The company has raised its payout to shareholders for 28 consecutive years. Rival Verizon has raised its dividend in announcements in early September in each of the past two years, with last year’s hike coming in it 2.5%. These two payouts remain the biggest dividends of the 30 DJIA components, and the frothiness of the share price is anticipating dividend hikes.

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) has that annualized payout when it pays a dividend, something which we hope that The Mouse House will move away from. Its dividend was static from 2007 to 2009, but as the economy has improved after the recession so has its dividend. The most recent hike was very high at 50% (to $0.60 from $0.40), and we would not expect a hike of that magnitude, but this last payout is only about 20% of its adjusted earnings expectations, while many established DJIA components pay closer to between 30% and 40% of their income out. Our take is that Disney will hike its payout to $0.70 or $0.75 before the end of this year, or $0.80 on an outside shot.

Yum! Brands Inc. (NYSE: YUM) is supposed to be the fast-food growth engine of China here in America, and perhaps the company wants to show that it can still open one store per day in China. The company last hiked its dividend in September 2011 by 14% to $0.285 per share, and the company said that it had increased its dividend each year at a double-digit percentage rate since initiating a dividend in 2004. Yum! The Yum! dividend policy continues to target a payout ratio of 35% to 40% of annual net income. If it wants to continue at the same double-digit growth rate, then that dividend needs to be hiked to $0.31 or more, which would come to about 38% of Yum!’s expected adjusted earnings for this year and about 33% of next year’s expected adjusted earnings.

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If you want some other dividends to peruse for higher and higher payouts and dividend growth via funds and exchange traded funds, here are some other ideas that avoid the risks of individual stocks.

PowerShares Dividend Achievers (NYSEMKT: PFM) is a dividend-growing, ETF but it has not grown as much as some might have expected. Its annualized payout over the past four payments alone was 2.12% as of today, but it truly does rise through time.

A rival dividend growth fund is the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (NYSEMKT: VIG), with a yield of closer to 2.1% but with more than 800,000 shares per day.

There is also the iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index (NYSEMKT: DVY), with a dividend north of 3% on a 12-month look back, and it is active with about 1 million shares trading each day.

iShares Dow Jones US Telecom (NYSEMKT: IYZ) has AT&T and Verizon as about 30% of its assets and some of the lower quality names drag its yield down to about 2.8%, with more than 400,000 shares trading each day. The Vanguard Telecom Services ETF (NYSEMKT: VOX) is a close rival but has less volume of 60,000 shares or so, with only about 62,000 shares trading hands on an average day.

In utilities, there is the Utilities Select Sector SPDR (NYSEMKT: XLU), which trades more than 6 million shares per day, and its yield is just under 4% now because its share price has risen more than 4% this year after gaining almost 20% last year, with utilities being the best S&P 500 sector in 2011.

JON C. OGG

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