There are some ASX dividend shares that continue to give shareholders income payrises every year.
During the biggest COVID-19 impacts in 2020, plenty of companies ended up cutting their dividend such as Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), Sydney Airport Holdings Ltd (ASX: SYD) and Scentre Group (ASX: SCG).
However, a select few managed to grow the dividend during that time and has continued the increases.
These are two of them:
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Sonic Healthcare Ltd (ASX: SHL)
Sonic Healthcare is an international healthcare provider with specialist operations in laboratory medicine, pathology, radiology, general practice medicine and corporate medical services. It has a presence in Australasia, Europe and North America.
The healthcare company has grown its dividend every year over the past decade. Sonic's board has a progressive dividend policy. Sonic increased its final dividend by 8%. The full year dividend was increased by 7% year on year.
Sonic continues to experience profit margin improvement, leading to faster profit growth compared to revenue. It's responsible for carrying out enormous amounts of COVID tests by utilising existing infrastructure, leading to operating leverage.
FY21 saw revenue increased 28% to $8.8 billion, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew 81% to $2.6 billion and net profit went up 149% to $1.3 billion.
In the first four months of FY22, the ASX dividend share's revenue was up 5% whilst EBITDA had gone up 16% to $991 million.
Whilst COVID testing is helping current revenue and profit, the base (non-COVID) business continues to grow – revenue was up 6% year on year in the first four months of FY22.
According to Commsec, the Sonic share price is valued at 16x FY22's estimated earnings. The potential dividend is projected to grow to an annual payment of $1.13.
APA Group (ASX: APA)
APA is another business that has been growing the income payment to shareholders.
It has increased its distribution every year for the last decade and a half and this growth has been funded by the rising operating cashflow of the business.
APA is a large energy infrastructure business with assets across a huge national gas pipeline, gas storage, renewable energy and gas power generation. It has 15,000 kilometres of natural gas pipelines connecting sources of supply and markets across mainland Australia. APA delivers half of the nation's natural gas usage.
It continues to look for new opportunities to invest and grow its asset base which is expected to lead to stronger cashflow and bigger distributions in the future.
APA has been on the hunt for growth opportunities. It thinks there huge opportunities in things like renewable energy, electricity transmission and hydrogen. The business is on the hunt in the USA for potential growth opportunities too.
The ASX dividend share is expecting to grow its distribution to $0.53 per unit in FY22, translating to a distribution yield of 5.2%.
