Abbott’s dividend performance gets significant attention, and for good reason. We’ve had 52 uninterrupted years of dividend growth – making us a doubly qualified member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat Index of companies that have raised their dividend payout for at least 25 consecutive years, as well as a Dividend King.

But Abbott’s growth story goes beyond its quarterly dividend, as illustrated by a recent research report from Arizona State University.

In July, Hendrik Bessembinder, a professor in the finance department at ASU, published the results of a research project in which he tracked the compound return outcomes of more than 29,000 publicly listed U.S. common stocks between 1925 and 2023 to see which returned the most money for investors.

Highlights among his data include:

• Between March 1937 and December 2023, Abbott shares generated a cumulative compound return of 7,803,730%. In other words, $1 invested in Abbott in 1937 would result in $78,083 in 2023. This makes Abbott the 11th most profitable stock of all time and No. 1 in healthcare.
• During this same timeframe, Abbott’s annualized compound return was 13.85%, slightly above the average of 13.47% for the top 17 performers.