Investors used to be addicted to stock splits for more than a generation. As share prices rose and rose, companies kept splitting their stock. Some consider this a means of keeping a share price low to keep attracting new investors. Other investors consider a stock split nothing but a gimmick.

Whole Foods Market Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM) was the latest company to join in on the bandwagon. The stock rose by 10% and hit yet another all-time on the news. The reality is that the shares have risen on a solid earnings report and on its ability to maintain much higher gross margin than traditional grocery stores.

Other companies have upcoming stock splits as well. The earnings calendar and stock split calendar show that A.O. Smith (NYSE: AOS) and Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL) will both go ex-split on a 2-1 basis with an ex-split date of May 16. Noble Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NBL) will go ex-split on a 2-1 basis on May 29.

Ask Warren Buffett what he thinks about stock splits. His A-shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) have never split and recently put in an all-time stock price high of almost $167,000. Even his more newly created B-shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) trade at a high price of $110.00.

Many companies do not like to split their stocks. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) might greatly benefit from this as it is more expensive to buy share of common stock than it is to buy an iPhone or an iPad. Still, its shares went to above $700 and the sell-off down to under $400 was never really directly attributed to Tim Cook not splitting the stock.

What about Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). Its stock just hit a new all-time high of $873.50 on Tuesday and this company’s efforts were being aimed at a split that was actually a division of power more than a traditional stock split investors are used to.

Some investors love stock splits. Others think of them as mere gimmicks. The debate remains alive, but as share prices rise and rise there will likely be more and more stock splits coming down the pipe. We have considered this merely as a poor man’s dividend. When you see stock split after stock split being announced, you generally know you are deep into a bull market.

24/7 Wall St. praises dividends. We also want to call out the myriad of great companies that need to realize that times demand investor payouts. A few companies are still buying growth, and we have identified some of these players as well. The thesis behind offering a solid dividend is that it instills confidence in investors that the company has earnings visibility for years even when the business cycle slows.

Having a real dividend policy may also be the key to keeping nervous investors from fleeing and going into cash or Treasury bonds, which pay almost nothing these days. There are just still too many companies in denial that they are still growth companies when they need to start directly rewarding shareholders. Some companies can get away without paying out a single cent to owners because the value of growth is so strong. That list is shrinking these days. Most companies we identified are in what we would call the “Dividend Sinners” category.

Our review focuses on Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A), Dollar General Corp. (NYSE: DG), Dollar Tree Inc. (NASDAQ: DLTR), eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Express Scripts Inc. (NASDAQ: ESRX), Jack in the Box Inc. (NASDAQ: JACK), Teradyne Inc. (NYSE: TER), United Continental Holdings Inc. (NYSE: UAL), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Zebra Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: ZBRA). We have handicapped whether investors might expect a dividend in the near-term or long-term from each of these as well.

The first order of business is to identify some of the great companies that have started paying a dividend since we (and others) have called for them to act with dividend payments in the past year or two. A few would include Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN), Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) and NASDAQ OMX Group Inc. (NASDAQ: NDAQ).

IBM previously announced that its next annual meeting of stockholders will be held April 30, 2013. In 2012 the company waited one week after its earnings to report that it was raising its dividend. We will not be surprised if the same holds true this year, but we are not as concerned about the actual week as we are the magnitude (or lack of) coming in the hike. Last year’s payout hike was by 13% (from $0.75 to $0.85 per share per quarter), but we think that IBM needs a much better dividend hike this time around. In fact, we will be severely disappointed if IBM does not get more aggressive on its dividend hike.

When IBM raised the payout by $0.10 per quarter to $0.85, shares were at $196.63 and they closed at $200.14 (both prices are dividend adjusted) the following day. The yield at the time it was declared went up to 1.73%, and now shares are closer to $210.00. The IT giant would have to offer a 5% payout raise just to get its payout the same as before, as the price appreciation now only generates a 1.62% dividend yield.

The company would represent that the buyouts are currently the preferred method of a return of capital to shareholders. IBM would also say that the buyouts automatically leverage any dividend hikes. The long and short is that IBM under-yields its DJIA technology peers and the company has no significant revenue growth. Maybe IBM is holding back in hopes of making a game-changing acquisition.

Some of IBM’s earnings growth comes from more streamlined operating by its managers, but the share buybacks are a large part of that earnings per share growth. We would argue also that changing salespeople payouts is another thing that allows earnings to grow while sales do not, but that is an internal issue that we will let salespeople and their managers take up.

IBM needs to understand that a 1.62% dividend yield is very unimpressive, even for technology leaders. Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) has only paid a dividend for about two years and its dividend yield is now more than 3%. Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) is in serious trouble finding growth and is also trying to protect its markets, and even it raised its dividend by 10% lately to payout a yield of 2.77%.

So how does IBM get to pay only about 60% of what Hewlett-Packard pays and only about half of what Cisco Systems pays out? The answer is that it should not be allowed to going forward. Warren Buffett is a large holder of IBM now (with over 68 million shares), and it is very well known that he loves to invest in companies paying dividends.

Ginny Rometty is now chairman and CEO of IBM, and she and the company already have telegraphed that IBM will yet again increase share buybacks. We cannot stress this enough, but our take is that Big Blue needs to target better earnings payout ratios versus today. Thomson Reuters has an estimate of earnings at $16.77 per share in 2013, and IBM has targeted $20.00 in earnings per share by the year 2015. That current $3.40 in annualized dividend payments, if left alone, would generate an income payout ratio of only about 20%. A $0.10 payout increase to $0.95 would only generate a payout ratio of less than 23%.

We are not going to predict that IBM will raise its dividend by this much, but we still think that the company should. IBM needs to target 30% of its normalized earnings for dividends, unless it is targeting a large acquisition soon. This would be a huge dividend increase because it would go all the way up to $5.00 per share per year. The yield of a $5.00 annualized payout rate is still only just under 2.4%, and that would still keep IBM as the lowest technology dividend of all DJIA stocks. In short, IBM has a lot of catching up to do now.

A screen on Finviz shows that IBM is not just among the lowest on the list of DJIA stocks by dividend yield. It is ranked as 25 of 30, down at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to DJIA dividend yields

Will IBM raise its payout to $1.25 per quarter (or $5.00 per year)? Most likely not. Our guess is that IBM will go up to $1.00 per quarter when it raises its payout in the next week or two, but anything short of that is not something for which we will be praising the company.

Just a few years ago, the common themes were out-of-control finances and out-of-control corporate leadership with no accountability to shareholders (nor to any moral hazards). The pendulum has now swung the other way, and perhaps it is starting to swing too far. Perhaps. Now anyone with access to millions of dollars or billions of dollars can aggressively go after a company for corporate governance issues. This can be over executive compensation, how a company should be capitalized, what forms of stock it should have, what terms it should have for a merger, whether it should split the roles of CEO and chairman, anti-takeover provisions, retirement compensation and on and on.

If you begged us to guess whether activism will grow or contract, we would think that activism will continue. Does that mean that there is not a risk nor that this is a bubble that will not burst and end badly for the public? Those are complicated issues and it may be quite some time before we know the answer. What is so interesting here is that the activist world very recently has targeted what may be hundreds of billions dollars worth of companies.

There are many instances where we cannot help but wonder if an activist bubble is helping to bolster many stocks. For starters, activists can often drive up a stock and create wonderful value. Sometimes they can get out of control, and sometimes they can go out and create absolute value destruction. The saying “there is no free lunch” is one that cannot be ignored, even by activists.

One big activist dilemma is General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE). GE is so large that forcing change is hard to do, but calls have been made over and over to break up the conglomerate’s empire. The problem is that weak units during one part of the business cycle act as cover for the other units when the business cycle changes. An activist might have said that GE needed to not cut its dividend during the recession, but this freed up enough capital that it probably saved quite literally tens of thousands of jobs at GE in the recession. Others have called for new leadership other than Jeff Immelt, while Immelt’s greatest blunders may simply have been that he took over after Jack Welch, when GE was trading close to 30 times earnings, and Immelt’s first day as CEO was quite literally a few days before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

A few powerful men with many financial backers behind them have gone after some really big companies. Again, this train is moving what is nothing short of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of companies. What you have not seen is why this may be a bubble. There is a serious risk in driving shareholder value in the short-term. Anyone can go in and propose layoffs, a spin-off, a recapitalization, a change in management and the like. The problem is that this effort can gut a company or it can merely be a win during one part of the business cycle.

Many efforts can be taken to unlock shareholder value. Special dividends can be issued. Debt can be taken on to pay a dividend or to buy back shares. Companies can go out and seek strategic alternatives. Companies can make their boards easy to change or they can get rid of any barriers that might lead to takeovers. There are dozens of more things they can do. The question to ask is whether creating short-term value comes at the cost of adding too much long-term risk. These risks are potentially serious issues that investors chasing activists have to consider.

We have noted just recently how the recent pullback in the stock has still not been enough to alter the stigma of investors and traders. They are still buying and selling stock options in many cases rather than buying the stock on the open market. We would not be surprised to see a higher dividend declared as well, but that would be in lieu of a preferred share rather alongside it.

Here is how the math works. At the current market price an investor has to spend $44,800 just to buy a mere 100 shares of Apple stock. To buy one put or call option contract gives an implied leverage of controlling 100 shares. One March $450 Call option costs $14.35 per contract or a mere $1,435.00 to get the right to own Apple at $450.

We do not like the latest proposal to create preferred shares. it is a distraction and may just be one more vehicle for investors to buy something else other than the common stock. Splitting the stock will help that stigma but the question is by how much. A 2-1 split only takes the price down to an adjusted $224. Our take is that if Apple really wants to split its stock then it should consider a 4-1 or even 6-1 to matter.

The thing that investors have to understand is that simply splitting a stock changes nothing real about the math on sales and earnings. It only makes the numbers smaller. Still, historically investors have loved when they see stock splits even if it is such a 1999 strategy.

Several banks were very close to meeting all of our financial, historic and transformative criteria, and they may be eligible for the list of safest banks in 2014, or even after the stress tests and after decisions have been formalized over returning capital to shareholders. Some of the data may seem investor oriented, but the reality is that institutional depositors, creditors and trading partners generally evaluate peers with many of the same metrics. The global economic recovery has lost some steam at the same time that the stock market has recovered. The public needs to know which of the larger banks are safe, regardless whether the economy stabilizes or worsens again.

The criteria to be among the safest banks has to be very strict by nature. It also has to apply to the larger institutions, which are either money-center banks or have multiple-state geographies. To make the list, a bank either had to have a minimum of 100 branches or it had to have retail branches in multiple states as the base level for relevance and importance. We used banks with a minimum market capitalization of $3 billion and a minimum asset base of $20 billion. These safest banks had to have the bulk of their image tied to retail and commercial banking operations with many branch offices (probably eliminate, we said above). This eliminated the great fiduciary banks such as State Street Corp. (NYSE: STT) and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK), even though they certainly would be considered among the safest banks. It also eliminated the bank holding companies with no retail banking operations, such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

24/7 Wall St. took a “Made in America” approach as well, and we screened out U.S. banking outfits that are actually subsidiaries of foreign banks. We also screened out the banks that were still in the process of making large, game-changing or transformative acquisitions, which are too difficult to evaluate in order to avoid absorbing any hidden or unknown risks.

With credit ratings becoming a risk again after a U.K. sovereign downgrade, and on the heels of the fiscal cliff and spending sequestration, all these banks also had to be considered investment grade by the major credit ratings agencies. A minimum hurdle of a 7.0% return on equity had to be seen, and we included the return on assets in this analysis as well. These safest banks had to have a minimum divided yield of 2.0% for their common stockholders, as proof that management believes that it can continue returning capital to shareholders through good and bad times, while still maintaining normal operations.

We screened out the nondiversified banks to avoid too many fluctuations throughout the business cycles. For an investment angle, we also gave preference to the banks where Wall St. analysts have a consensus price target above the current share price, indicating that some underlying value potentially remains. If a bank’s common stock was less than $10.00 per share, it had to have its metrics well above average among the largest banks.

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While Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) was the best performing of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks in 2012, it and the money-center banking giant Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) actually do not qualify to be in the safest banks in America, even though the reality is that these banks are almost certain to survive another recession. The Federal Reserve deems them to still be problem banks, and they have so far not been freed up to raise their dividends or to increase share buybacks. That may change ahead, and the reality is that these banks are believed to be strong enough to weather most negative scenarios under the impending stress tests.

Finally, we eliminated banks that we did not feel would survive another recession. Consumers have to keep their money somewhere other than under their mattresses. Having an extremely safe bank to protect your hard-earned cash, nest-eggs and safety deposit boxes in hard times is much more important than how high of a rate depositors can get on certificates of deposit and in their checking and savings accounts. As far as quality is concerned, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) has large stakes in three of the seven safest banks.

In mid-2012, banking regulators proposed to incorporate Basel III capital changes for substantially all U.S. banking organizations. Our list of safest banks shows the Tier-1 ratio today as well as the company’s projected Tier-1 ratio under the proposed rules. This also helps to eliminate any problems over safety and vulnerability ahead. If Basel III is finally adopted as proposed, the threshold for the Tier 1 common equity ratio will be 7%, consisting of a minimum level plus a capital conservation buffer.

Based on the analysis, we anticipate that future lists of the safest banks in America may include 10 or even 12 banks, rather than seven, because many banks only missed one criteria yet exceeded other hurdles handily. We still are not evaluating the community or single-region banks due to size or single geography risks. That being said, many of those community banks have better ratios than any of the larger safest banks in America.

This is the 24/7 Wall St. list of the seven safest banks in America for 2013 to deposit money into, ranked in order of safety, size by assets, and reach.  Our rank is based on financial stability, size by assets, and by reach.

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) took its dividend up yet again, proving its dividend aristocrat status. Shares are still 6% south of a 52-week high and yield was already 2.7%. Coke raised its quarterly payout by 10% to $0.28 per share per quarter and the yield is almost 3% now. Our take: Coke leads Pepsi in the dividend investor taste test, although Jim Cramer thinks Pepsi is better right now.

HollyFrontier Corporation (NYSE: HFC) might not sound like an exciting dividend on the surface, but it is. The refiner lifted its payout a sharp 50% to $0.30 per share as the fifth increase in the regular dividend since the merger in July 2011. It also announced a special cash dividend of $0.50 per share and that was the 8th special dividend since August 2011. If you combine the common and special payouts as a norm, the yield is 5.7% announalized. Otherwise the yield is closer to 2.2%.

Kimberly-Clark Corp. (NYSE: KMB) just put more pressure on its consumer products peers to raise their quarterly payouts. It increased its dividend payout by about one-tenth even when its shares were already at all-time highs. The 3.2% yield was already high, but now that will be a 3.5% yield for investors who want to chase the stock with new money.

Texas Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: TXN) is magically back up to within 1% a 52-week high. The company added $5 billion to its stock buyback plan (against a $37 billion market cap) and the dividend was raised by one-third to $0.28 from $0.21 per share per quarter. TI’s yield was already good at 2.5% and now that will be about 3.2%. A near 5% gain was hard to ignore in the stock price.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) had earnings which were disappointing when you look at guidance and low same-store sales. The blame: payroll tax and delayed tax refunds. What bailed Wal-Mart out of a bad week was an 18% dividend hike to $1.88 on an annualized basis. The world’s largest retailer was paying almost 2.3% for a dividend yield but that is now going to be right at 2.7%.

Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) is a boring “technology” play that we might just consider an office products play now. A dividend of $0.575 does not sound that high until you consider that the stock was under $8.00 at the time. This represents a gain of more than one-third and the new yield is just under 3% at $2.92%. Argus liked it enough to spend the hours required to write a two-page “reiterated buy” rating and the call sent shares up 3% Friday because the price target of $13 on the stock implies more than 50% upside for investors. This was the first dividend hike in years.

We would like to end with a list of the top dividend stocks held in the Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.

We are still looking for many key dividend hikes in early 2013. That will particularly be the case for giants such as Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), 3M Co. (NYSE: MMM), and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT). A serious potential dividend hike may finally come for Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), but we are not ready to really say that is definite until another year of capital building. Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) also are likely to keep up their dividend war to attract investors.

We have looked for the current yield and what prior dividend history has been, and also we have included what the expected payout rate of earnings would be compared to existing Thomson Reuters earnings per share estimates for 2013. We have recently offered informal upside to our DJIA 14,590 peak price target for 2013 and these dividend hikes have to be one of the key driving factors in that chase.

The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) is likely to have yet another dividend hike. In 2012 that came in mid-February, and it has an earnings webcast on February 12 and presentation to consumer analysts on February 22. Last year marked the first stock split in a generation, and the beverage giant has a history of annual dividend hikes. The $1.04 per share annualized payout generates a current dividend of 2.75%. We would note that this is already at a payout rate of about 48% of the projected $2.17 in earnings per share for the 2013 consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. Coke’s hand may be forced here as rival Pepsico Inc. (NYSE: PEP) yields closer to 3%.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) now has its London Whale mess behind it and Jamie Dimon has said that he wants to be able to get back on track with dividend hikes, share buybacks and more shareholder friendly activities. The wild card is whether banking regulators will approve such a move. We think that a hike remains probably, but we would not look for its dividend hike to be massive. At 2.5% or so, its $0.30 per quarter might be allowed to be raised to as much as $0.35 per share per quarter. This would represent a 26% payout rate of its comparable earnings per share estimate of $5.36 from Thomson Reuters for 2013. Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) already raised its dividend, and we think Jamie Dimon will press for this. Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) remains a wild card as it is among the second tier of the too big to fail banks as far as regulators are concerned. Banking analyst Dick Bove sees higher payouts coming from banks soon as well, but we would note that BofA’s last dividend announcement did not exude much dividend hike confidence.

3M Co. (NYSE: MMM) is a serial dividend payer and a serial dividend hiker. We expect that to continue, perhaps in the next few days. 3M says that it has paid 384 consecutive quarterly cash dividends and increased the annual dividend for 54 consecutive years. With a 2.3% dividend yield, 3M lags the much larger 3.4% payout offered by General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE). 3M shares are literally trying to challenge a 52-week high and we would mark that an all-time high if you adjust for dividends. Its $2.36 annualized payout of the past 12 months represents a payout rate of almost 35% of its normalized expected earnings per share of $6.84 by Thomson Reuters.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) moved up its last dividend date at a rate of $0.3975, but that was the retail giant’s fourth payment at that rate in a row. The Walmart board of directors approved its last hike on March 1, 2012, an annual dividend hike of about 9% to $1.59 per share. With shares currently around $70, the yield is 2.3%. With earnings projected to be $5.38 per share in the year ahead, the same 9% hike again would represent a payout rate of about 32%.

Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) are listed last because they are slightly farther away. These two oil and gas giants are both DJIA components and should both see their common stock dividends get raised. Unfortunately, this may be about 60 days to 75 days away. Chevron is yielding 3.1%, and while there could be one more quarter of a $0.90 payout, this was raised twice inside of the historic four-quarter dividend hike cycle. Exxon Mobil has a four-quarter cycle, and it hiked its payment last April. Its yield today only clocks in at about 2.5%.

We would make investors aware of two more things here. The Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (NYSEMKT: VIG) tracks the companies that have raised their dividends through time. It should be no surprise at all that six of its ten top holdings are listed in here. An alternative to the direct dividend ETF is the PowerShares Buyback Achievers (NYSEMKT: PKW) which follows companies aggressively repurchasing their shares. That is “the other dividend” when it comes to returning capital to shareholders.

Intel is unlikely to spend all of this in short order. We already pointed out that Intel has spent billions and billions buying its shares. The problem is that Intel’s stock, even with a $99 billion valuation, is still down by about one-third from a 52-week high.

Intel shares are up 2.4% at $20.01 on the day. Perhaps Intel should be looking for a way to spend that capital to get a faster and stronger foot in the door than it has had so far. Either way, if dividend taxes are going to suddenly go from 15% to over 40% then we would expect for Intel to lower its dividend and spend more money buying back stock.

The wild card is always how much of that cash it holds is locked-up overseas where it would take a huge clip if repatriated.

JON C. OGG

The dividend (split) will be an early Christmas present as it is payable on December 24, 2012 to shareholders of record at the close of business December 10, 2012.  Nike expects its common stock to begin trading ex-split on December 26, 2012.

Nike has also declared a quarterly cash dividend on the Class A and Class B shares of $0.21 per share on a post-split basis. On a split-adjusted basis this will be a gain of 17% in Nike’s dividend payout to holders. Today’s dividend hike marks the eleventh year in a row the Company has increased its annual dividend. That dividend will be payable on December 26, 2012 to holders of record at the close of business on December 10, 2012.

Upon completion of the split, the outstanding shares of Class A and B shares will increase to approximately 178 million and 720 million, respectively.

Nike raised its share buyback plan in September to allow for a total of up to $8 billion for share repurchases. The company’s market cap as of the close was $40.9 billion. Nike closed up 0.25% at $90.83 and shares are up 1% after the close; its 52-week trading range is $85.10 to $114.81.

JON C. OGG