Investors love dividends and stock buybacks. After all, these are the two most common forms of returning capital to shareholders under corporate governance. With 2014 coming to an end, and with investors now looking to 2015, there have been several dividend hikes and stock buybacks in November and December that simply have been too big to ignore.

24/7 Wall St. has identified 10 companies that either increased their dividends by more than expected or announced share buybacks that were just too big to ignore.

As investors stomach the thought of a rising interest rate environment in 2015, a stock market effectively at all-time highs and a slow international growth picture into deflationary headwinds, it seems given that investors are more likely to be very selective in which stocks they want to own in the year ahead.

AES Corp. (NYSE: AES) may not have been a great dividend rate at 1.5% or so, but the electric power generator announced on December 15 that it is doubling the dividend from $0.05 to $0.10 per share per quarter. This will get it closer to a 3% yield. AES said that it will allocate significantly more of its cash toward the dividend. At just under $13.40 on Friday, AES shares have a 52-week range of $12.38 to $15.65 — so its stock is nowhere close to high. The consensus analyst price target is $15.40.

Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) managed to handily beat our own dividend hike expectations. The aerospace and defense giant announced that it would increase its quarterly dividend by 25% to $0.91 per share. We had predicted that Boeing’s current payout of $0.73 likely would be raised to $0.80 per share, or as much as $0.85 on the highest upside expected. At the same time, Boeing authorized a $12 billion share repurchase program. Keep in mind that Boeing has been buying back stock already and that the prior dividend hike was by 50% — representing a combined increase of 88% over the past two years. Could Boeing be the best Dow stock of 2015?

ALSO READ: The 7 Best Investments of 2014

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) gave everyone a Thanksgiving surprise in late November at its annual investor meeting. The semiconductor and processor giant raised its dividend to $0.96 from $0.90 per share on an annualized basis. What stands out the most here is that Intel’s most recent dividend hike was paid out in mid-2012, when the quarterly payout went to $0.225 per share from $0.21 per share. Quite literally, it was less than 12 months ago that some analysts said they feared that Intel might not be able to raise its dividend for years. It turns out that the death of the PC and the rise of the mobile Web may not have left Intel in the dust. Now you know why Intel was the best Dow stock performer of 2014 and why investors are only now just starting to warm up to it for 2015 and beyond.

Kinder Morgan Inc. (NYSE: KMI) is now the post-merger Kinder Morgan, and it is one of the few oil and gas giants that has not been crushed due to it being an infrastructure play. Its shares are even up 18% or so year-to-date. Kinder Morgan came out in the first week of December and gave a forecast in its dividend budget of $2.00 per share for 2015. While the announcement came with a lower oil price expectation in 2015, and while it did not address its prior multiyear dividend targets, some investors might have worried that there was no way Richard Kinder could deliver on his prior estimates. This is a 4.9% dividend yield now, from the largest oil and gas infrastructure play in the United States.

3M Co. (NYSE: MMM) raised its dividend by 20% to a total of $1.025 per share for the first quarter of 2015. 24/7 Wall St. had indicated that 3M’s dividend hike might move up to $0.90 or maybe $0.95 from the existing $0.855 per share. This was on top of the prior year’s dividend hike of 35%. 3M had previously announced a $12 billion stock buyback program in February, and the market cap is now about $106 billion. 3M had the best earnings report of the major conglomerates in October, and you can see why Merrill Lynch recently issued a street-high analyst price objective of $190.

ALSO READ: 9 Big Stocks That Have More Than Doubled in 2014

Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE: NOC) announced on December 4 that its board of directors has authorized an additional $3 billion for the repurchase of the company’s common stock. While these share buybacks are subject to market conditions and management’s discretion, this is a serious buyback when you consider that Northrop Grumman has a market cap of almost $30 billion. A buyback announcement of about 10% of your outstanding float is hard to ignore, particularly when almost 90% of your shares are held by institutions and funds. This begs the question: What defense budget worries? This defense contractor hiked its dividend for the 11th straight year back in May, so with it paying out only about 30% of expected earnings for next year, should we expect another dividend hike this coming May?

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) was the first of our five expected Dow dividend hikes in December, but what was impressive here was that Disney’s dividend hike blew our expectations out of the water. Disney hiked its dividend payout by $0.29 per share, up to $1.15, far above the $0.95 to $1.00 per share we had expected. The Force is obviously very strong with Bob Iger, and much of the company’s confidence must be tied to Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of the Star Wars franchise.

Corning Inc. (NYSE: GLW) has managed to hit new multiyear highs in December. The glass works giant declared a 20% hike for its quarterly dividend to $0.12 per share, and its board of directors authorized a new $1.5 billion share repurchase program through the end of 2016. This is as the company sees a slowdown of glass price declines in 2015, and now Citigroup added a fresh Buy rating and $25 price target. Corning’s market cap is almost $29 billion, and the new $0.48 annualized dividend will generate a current yield of about 2.2%. This dividend is nominally 140% higher than the $0.05 paid out in 2011.

CVS Health Corp. (NYSE: CVS) announced on December 16 that it would be even friendlier to shareholders. The pharmacy giant increased its common stock dividend by 27% at its annual analyst day meeting. CVS said that it also plans to make strategic bolt-on acquisitions, but the rest of its cash is for dividends and “value-enhancing share repurchases.” The 27% dividend increase will be a hike to $0.35 per share per quarter, versus a prior $0.30 rate, for a 1.55% yield. The buyback component was $10 billion and was to be combined with approximately $2.7 billion that remained from the 2013 buyback plan, for a total of about $12.7 billion to be used for buybacks. CVS had a $104 billion market cap prior to this announcement, but that is now up to $110 billion, and the stock hit a new all-time high.

ALSO READ: The 2015 Outlook for Gold and Silver

AGCO Corp. (NYSE: AGCO) is listed last because it sounds too small on the surface to matter. It is not too small to matter, and AGCO shares are much closer to a 52-week low than to a 52-week high. The agricultural equipment giant authorized a share repurchase program of up to $500 million of its common stock on December 15. AGCO’s new plan is effective through December 31, 2016, and is in addition to any previously authorized share repurchases. What stands out here is that AGCO’s market cap is only about $4.1 billion. Zacks Investment research said that AGCO was already in an accelerated repurchase agreement to repurchase an aggregate of $290 million of its shares. Zacks also said that some $190.5 million remained authorized for repurchase as of the third quarter’s end. AGCO shares were trading around $45 on Friday. Its stock has a consensus analyst price target of $44.59 and a 52-week trading range of $41.56 to $59.42.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.