It's getting harder and harder to find shares that can provide reliable and growing dividends to investors.
Inflation is low, wage growth is low, economic growth is low, debt levels are high. It's not an easy environment for businesses to grow earnings and dividends strongly.
Here are two ASX share ideas that are growing dividends year after year:
APA Group (ASX: APA)
APA Group is a very large infrastructure business with a market cap of over $13 billion according to the ASX.
It owns or has a stake in a variety of energy transmission, storage or generation assets across Australia including several gas pipelines which link areas of the country.
Rising populations, increasing energy demands and growing pipeline networks has seen APA increase its distribution every year for over a decade.
The business has provided guidance of a distribution per share of 50 cents for FY20, which translates to a forward distribution yield of 4.5%.
Ramsay Health Care Limited (ASX: RHC)
Ramsay is one of the largest private hospital operators in the world with large networks in Australia and Europe.
Aside from issues relating to private health insurance affordability, Ramsay could be one of the best ways to benefit from the ageing populations in western countries. The older we become the more likely it is that we'll need medical help in some way, which sometimes involves a hospital.
Ramsay has grown its dividend every year since 2000 driven by good organic growth, hospital expansions and new hospitals.
It currently has a grossed-up dividend yield of 3%.
Foolish takeaway
Both of these shares have good dividend growth prospects with long-term growth of their services. Their yields are not high, but it gets a lot harder to grow a dividend when businesses pay too high of a dividend to shareholders. I'd prefer to buy APA Group because of its higher yield and its energy diversification strategy.
