Ask Matt: Can P&G continue to raise its dividend?

— -- Q: How regularly has Procter & Gamble raised its dividend and is the company likely to continue to do so in the future?

P&G, one of the world's largest makers of packaged consumer goods, is famous for many of its brands. As the maker of everything from Tide to Pampers and Duracell to NyQuil, chances are at some point in the day you'll touch a P&G product.

But to investors, one of the biggest draws of P&G isn't just the company's stable of leading brands, but its dividend. The company has a long history of boosting its cash payments to investors, a heritage that goes back for decades.

The rise in P&G's dividend over the years is a track record many companies can only aspire to. Investors that look at P&G's dividend history see a consistent pattern of raises.

P&G paid a penny a share dividend in the first quarter of 1970, after adjusting for stock splits. And most recently, P&G has paid a dividend of 56 cents a share. That's a 5,500% increase since 1970, or a compound annual rate of growth of 10%.

How consistent have the dividend increases at P&G been? Very. The company hasn't increased its dividend every single year, but investors have rarely had to wait much longer than two years historically for an increase to come. And P&G has never cut its dividend so far.

Even so, it's unrealistic to expect another hike soon. P&G's last dividend increase was very recent, when the company took the quarterly payout up 7% to 56 cents a share. That increased dividend was paid on May 15, 2012 for shareholders of record on April 27.

P&G regularly increases dividends, but it's not typically something that happens many times a year. The previous dividend increase was a 9% bump on the dividend payable May 16, 2011.

At that clip, investors will have at least another year to wait before P&G would start thinking about taking the dividend up again.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies and Fundamental Analysis for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Follow Matt on Twitter at: twitter.com/mattkrantz