5 Boring Dividend Stocks That Could Keep Growing While Customers Pay More

In its second quarter, Waste Connections (NYSE:WCN | WCN Price Prediction) raised core prices on solid waste by 5.6% while volumes fell 1.9%. Its underlying adjusted EBITDA margin still expanded by 70 bps. When a company can charge more, lose some customers, and make more money anyway, it has pricing power. The five businesses below collect trash, sell sanitizer, stock maintenance closets, run payroll and pipe oxygen. That dullness is the appeal. Each one has shown, with numbers, that it can raise prices and keep its customers.

Waste Connections: Trash Pickup Where Competitors Are Scarce

Waste Connections picks up, transfers and buries garbage for about nine million residential, commercial and industrial customers across 46 U.S. states and six Canadian provinces, mostly in exclusive and secondary markets. Management calls its western region “100% exclusive”. Inside a franchise like that, a household or contractor has no other hauler to call.

The contract structure shows up in the margins. On top of the core price increase, fuel and material surcharges added 1.1%. The adjusted EBITDA margin reached 32.8%, even with fuel being about 40 basis points of margin. Management expects full-year core price to land at or above 5.5%, with 2026 pricing “largely complete or otherwise known.”

The recent construction slump was a live test. Construction and demolition tons rose year over year in Q2 for the first time in 10 quarters, so the current margin was earned at the end of a long stretch of weak construction work. Over 10 years the stock has returned 241.78%, though it is down 9.99% year to date. The quarterly dividend has went up from $0.205 in 2021 to $0.35.

Risk: Higher prices cost some volume. Management linked about 10 to 15 basis points of extra turnover to the surcharges, mentioning that private rivals often “take three to nine months and eat it” before passing on fuel being themselves.

Ecolab: Sanitation Chemistry Built Into the Daily Routine

Cleaning chemicals, water treatment and pest control are what Ecolab (NYSE:ECL) sells to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, food plants and data centers, with about $16 billion in annual sales across more than 170 countries. Its products and on-site service technicians are part of how a customer’s kitchen or plant runs every day. Switching suppliers would mean retraining staff and rechecking food-safety procedures.

Second-quarter organic sales rose 5%: 4% from pricing and 1% from volume. When commodity costs jumped, Ecolab put a global energy surcharge in place, and the CEO said “we managed to do both within three months.” He also described how the model works: “we never give the pricing back.” Management said gross margin has risen over the last 10 years. The institutional business grew 4% even though U.S. restaurant traffic fell 5%.

The dividend record covers two recessions. The quarterly payment went from $0.13 in 2008 to $0.14 in 2009 and $0.155 in 2010. It went from $0.47 in 2020 to $0.48 in 2021. The available history back to 1999 shows no cuts. The stock has returned 171.28% over 10 years.

Risk: Commodity and energy costs keep rising, and regional conflict cut volume by about 1%. The CoolIT acquisition also weighs on near-term EPS through amortization and financing costs.

Grainger: Gloves, Filters and Fasteners at Steady Margins

Grainger (NYSE:GWW) distributes maintenance, repair and operating supplies, the items a factory, hospital or school has to restock whether or not business is good. It serves more than 4.6 million customers through its Grainger, Zoro and MonotaRO brands.

Grainger’s pricing rule is “price-cost neutrality over time,” and it has kept to it through a difficult tariff period. Management expects full-year pricing of around 4%, the high end of its original range. It described the September increase as “normal course discussions” with customers. Second-quarter gross margin rose 100 bps to 39.5%. However, 90 basis points of that came from one-time tariff refunds. First-quarter gross margin was 40.0% without them.

Grainger raised its quarterly dividend through the downturn, from $0.35 in early 2008 to $0.40 in 2009 and $0.46 in 2010. In 2020 it went from $1.44 to $1.53. The stock has returned 605.86% over 10 years, including 30.05% so far this year, so expectations are already high.

Risk: The tariff refunds will not repeat. Management expects third-quarter operating margin in the mid 15% range, down from the second quarter, with freight being still rising.

ADP: Payroll That Has to Run Every Pay Period

ADP (NASDAQ:ADP) handles payroll, payroll taxes, benefits and HR compliance for more than 1.1 million clients in more than 140 countries. Employers in a recession can freeze hiring, but they still have to pay their staff accurately and file payroll taxes on time.

The company tells investors how much of its growth comes from price. Price added “a little north of 130 basis points” to Employer Services revenue growth in fiscal 2026, and management expects about the same in fiscal 2027. Employer Services segment margin rose 90 bps to 34.4%, and client revenue retention held at 92.1%. That came with U.S. pays per control (employees paid per client) growing just 1%, so the business kept growing while client headcounts barely moved.

During the pandemic, ADP raised its quarterly dividend from $0.91 to $0.93 in September 2020. The stock has returned 298.94% over 10 years and 0.85% over the past year.

Risk: Management expects client retention to slip by 10-30 bps in fiscal 2027 and pays per control to grow just 0-1%. Investors also worry that AI could disrupt HR software as a whole.

Linde: Industrial Gases Sold on Long Contracts

Linde (NASDAQ:LIN) is the world’s largest supplier of industrial gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, argon and hydrogen. Many of its plants are built next to a single customer’s facility and run under take-or-pay contracts lasting 15-20 years. For those customers, switching to another supplier is close to impossible.

Price increases are written into the business. Linde’s second-quarter price increase of 2% was “broad-based across all geographies and generally tracked with local inflation.” Operating margin was 29.5% and return on capital was 23.5%. The sale-of-gas backlog stands at a record $8.1B, which is signed demand that has not shown up in revenue yet.

Management calls its healthcare and food and drink markets “consistent,” and the 2020 dividend reflected that. The quarterly payment rose from $0.875 in 2019 to $0.963 in 2020, and it has gone up every year in the available record, reaching $1.60. Since its current listing began in October 2018, the stock has returned 229.15%.

Risk: Operating margin fell 60 basis points from a year earlier, mostly because of the U.S. home care business. Management said plainly that “we are not satisfied with our margin performance for this quarter.”

What Ties These Five Together

All five have raised prices this year and mostly held their margins, and each has kept paying through past downturns. Their appeal rests on durability. Their records show how pricing power can hold up over long periods. The next few quarterly reports should reveal if these price increases continue to hold.

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