By Stockpickr Staff
Posted on May 27, 2009

During a week when the Dow was virtually flat, it's remarkable that there were several dozen dividend declarations, with more than 20 companies announcing increases to their dividends. Even the Société de la Tour Eiffel declared a dividend. (The company doesn't own the Eiffel Tower; it's merely a French commercial real estate company.)

Stockpickr has gone through the dividend announcements for the past week and compiled a portfolio of the top dividend-increasers.

Northrop Grumman (NOC) bumped up its dividend by 7.5%, declaring a quarterly dividend of 43 cents per share on its common stock, an increase from 40 cents per share. This gives the stock a yield of 3.6%. The dividend is payable June 13 to shareholders of record as of the close of business June 1.

Recently, Jim Cramer removed Northrop from his Sell Block, saying it's a buy, especially below $43, because of the dividend increase and because defense spending is now 4% higher than it was last year. Although the company recently generated negative earnings, its dividend payout of $556 million is easily covered by the operating cash flow of $2.85 billion. It has $923 million in cash with total debt of $3.94 billion.

Northrop Grumman is owned by Pzena Investment Management, a classic value investment management company that looks for deeply undervalued stocks. In its portfolio, which amounts to more than $8 billion, it also owns another dividend-increaser, AmerisourceBergen (ABC) which announced a two-for-one stock split last week plus an increase to the quarterly dividend by an incredible 20% to 6 cents per common share on a post-split basis, starting with the third fiscal quarter of 2009. This company, which provides drug distribution services to healthcare providers and pharmaceutical manufacturers, generates a yield of 1.1%.

Yet another dividend-booster for the week was Airgas (ARG), a distributor of industrial, medical and specialty gases. It increased its dividend by 13% to 18 cents a share, compared with 16 cents a share for the previous quarter. This gives the stock a yield of 1.7%.

After Airgas CEO Peter McCausland appeared on "Mad Money" a couple weeks ago, Cramer changed his negative opinion of the company and is now sticking with it. Its $58.5 million in dividend payouts is covered 10 times over by the operating cash flow of $582.77 million. It has $1.76 billion in total debt with only $47 million in cash.

Airgas is owned by Tygh Capital Management, an Oregon-based investment manager specializing in small-cap and small-mid-cap growth stocks. It was founded in July 2004 by Richard J. Johnson and Jeff B. Curtis. Tygh also owns Amphenol (APH) with a 0.2% yield; Silgan Holdings; (SLGN) with a 1.7% yield; and Global Payments (GPN), which has a yield of 0.2%.

For more ideas, check out the top dividend-increasers portfolio at Stockpickr.