Investors love dividends, particularly safe and dependable dividends that rise through time. The S&P 500 Index currently has the most companies paying dividends in nearly two decades. The year 2013 has seen a continued dividend growth trend, and 24/7 Wall St. expects this to continue in 2014.

The calendar is generally packed with companies raising dividends at the start of their fiscal years, but many big dividend hikes are announced toward the end of the year. Investors should be expecting several key dividend hikes to be announced in late November or in December. In fact, some are already overdue, based on prior years.

Some companies continue to repurchase shares as well as pay good dividends. The problem is that we are now at all-time highs in the stock market, and many of these great companies are also at or close to all-time highs or post-recession highs. It is fair to ask a company for a dividend hike, but does it seem fair to beg companies to pay up for shares to retire them when they are not under pressure?

We have selected eight big dividend hikes we are looking for before the end of 2013. A timeline has been given for each company, and some of these dividend hikes even may arrive in November rather than in December. Another attempt has been made to show what the dividends should rise up to, generally based on earnings growth and/or an operating income payout ratio.

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Most payable dates will occur in 2014 rather than before the end of the year, as there are no pressing tax code changes from 2013 to 2014 as there were last year.

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) is now four quarters into its $0.47 per share payout, and with its shares up at $115 or so it seems a waste to buy back stock this high. Amgen also has taken on a lot of debt, so increasing its dividend may be more measured than the hike from $0.36 to $0.47 per quarter. Amgen is also in the position of being one of the few biotechs actually to have a dividend policy in place. Its 1.6% yield is due to a big appreciation in the stock. We expect the bump to be up to as much as $0.55 per share this time around, and still be just under a 30% payout of normalized operating income. But it is hard to judge this one as it is still somewhat unpredictable. Be advised that the 2012 dividend hike announcement was made in mid-December but was not paid until March of 2013, so the hike announcement is all we expect.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is already the king of dividends among the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) stocks with its 5% yield. In 2012, AT&T announced its dividend hike in November, a month sooner than we expected because companies were getting their news out ahead of tax code changes. Its dividend has been $0.45 per quarter, and we expect this to increase to $0.46 per quarter. The telecom giant is already at such a higher yield than other stocks that it simply does not need to grow its payout much more than that. The big question is whether AT&T needs to conserve cash to go after that rumored Vodafone buyout.

Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) is likely a shoo-in for a dividend hike. After all, it may be sitting on somewhere close to $500 billion in backlog now for plane orders over the next decade. Shares have risen too much to expect that much common stock has been bought under a repurchase plan. The past two dividend hike announcements were made in mid-December, and those payments were not made until March of each year. Dividend hikes also have been very measured rather than massive. The new $0.485 dividend per quarter is about 29% of normalized operating income, so expecting a hike to $0.52 or $0.53 seems safe. The company has much investment to recoup from the 787 Dreamliner, and its defense business is challenged with global budget issues and sequestration.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) is due for a dividend hike in December. GE has now formalized its spin-off plans for its consumer finance operations under GE Capital, and this clears the way for Jeff Immelt and team to be evaluated as though they are an industrial conglomerate rather than a bank and a conglomerate combined. GE’s prior forecast is that dividends will grow at the same rate as earnings, so we expect that $0.19 per quarter dividend to jump up to $0.20 or $0.21 per share. Keep in mind that GE already outyields its conglomerate peers handily with a 2.8% dividend yield. Its stock has also hit post-recession highs, so we would not be disappointed even if the dividend hike was up to $0.20.

Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK) is stuck in the mud but may have no choice but to hike its dividend. It is in the field of Big Pharma stocks that are restructuring and also facing limited growth opportunities on organic operations. Earnings are expected to be down almost 10% in 2013 and basically flat in 2014, but sales are expected to be down more than 6% in 2013 and down more than 1% more in 2014. Those are bad metrics, but Merck did promise recently to maintain a high level of cash returned to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks. With a 3.6% dividend yield now, its dividend is already much better than the 3% yield of rival Pfizer. Merck’s most recent dividend hike was late in November of last year, so this could be imminent.

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Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) is one of the newly added DJIA components, and frankly we expected the dividend hike to have been made already. Its yield is low for a DJIA stock at 1.1%, and the current payout of $0.21 quarterly or $0.84 annualized is only about 27% of its expected annual operating income. Nike has never really made it a point to massively boost its dividend, so we would expect the payout of $0.21 to rise to $0.24 or maybe $0.25 per quarter. It would just be off base to expect much more than this. Dear Nike management, just do it!

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) has been paying $0.12 per quarter, but last year it ramped up its dividends into an accelerated payment structure ahead of the tax laws changing on dividends. It is possible that the company’s dividend hike cycle has changed as a result, but we do expect the enterprise software giant to deliver on dividend hikes soon. After all, the only reason its stock has risen is because of the bull market. Its earnings story has been spotty at best, and it yields a paltry 1.4% as of now. We would like to see a big hike, perhaps as much as another 50% or even more. The caveat: Larry Ellison may be getting the itch to make one more large acquisition soon.

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) is the last of the giants to pay its dividend annually. We would love to see this change to quarterly payments, but the real problem is that Disney’s share price gains keep the dividend yield very low. Disney also has been aggressive with cash acquisitions, such as the Star Wars franchise. The stock is close to $69, versus an all-time high of just over $70, yet the yield is now a paltry 1.1%. It is hard to expect the prior 50% dividend hike, but perhaps it can match the 25% dividend growth of earlier. The $0.75 dividend now could possibly be raised to $1.00, and that would be just over 25% of operating income paid out.

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