During the last week, several companies raised their dividends, and two of them were tobacco companies. A few of the other dividend-increasers were financial companies.

Stockpickr has reviewed all of the dividend declarations for the week and compiled a list of the top dividend-increasers for the week.

One of the biggest increasers is Philip Morris International (PM), the cigarette and tobacco company that markets its brands, including Marlboro, L&M, Philip Morris, Chesterfield, Parliament, Lark and Virginia Slims, outside the U.S. It bumped up its quarterly dividend by 17.4% to 54 cents per share. According to the New York Stock Exchange, Philip Morris had the third-biggest increase in short positions of all NYSE stocks. The stock has a forward P/E of 14, a PEG of 1.23 and a yield of 3.4%.

Philip Morris shows up on the Stockpickr portfolio called Cramer's Take on Top 10 Most-Searched Stocks from 6-27-08, which mentions that Jim Cramer liked the stock. Other stocks in the portfolio include Gerdau (GGB), with a yield of 4.9%; CBRL Group (CBRL), with a yield of 2.8%; and Tupperware Brands (TUP), with a 2.4% yield.

Another dividend raiser is Harris (HRS), a communications and information technology company, which raised its quarterly dividend by 33% to 20 cents per share. The company just announced a strategic alliance with Freescale Semiconductor to manufacture compact and power-efficient UHF transmitters. The stock has a PE of 16, a PEG of 0.76 and a yield of 1.5%.

Harris is one of the stockholdings of Ritchie Capital, a global alternative asset management firm founded by Thane Ritchie in 1997. It focuses on arbitrage and relative value strategies. Other stocks it owns include Informatica (INFA), CB Richard Ellis Group (CBG) and Western Digital (WDC), none of which pay a dividend.

H&R Block (HRB) is another dividend-raiser, bumping up its quarterly dividend by 5.3% to 15 cents per share. This tax preparation company just announced that it named Sabrina Wiewel president of its digital tax services. She had previously worked at Eli Lilly (LLY) and Hallmark Cards Inc. It also announced that it spent $272,000 for lobbying during the second quarter. The stock has a forward P/E of 13, a PEG of 1.3 and a yield of 2.3%.

H&R is in the portfolio of the Jennison 20/20 Focus Fund, which has a Morningstar rating of three stars and is run by Spiros Segalas. It has had an average annual return of 19.3% over the last five years. It also owns Suncor Energy (SU), with a 0.3% yield; American International Group (AIG), with a 4.1% yield; and Best Buy (BBY), with a 1.5% yield.

For more of the top dividend-increasers for the week, go to Stockpickr.com.

Posted on Sept. 2, 2008