By 17, Associated had paid out cash dividends equal to the purchase price of the stock 13 years earlier. Seven years later, by the end of 2006, those cumulative dividends were 2.5 times the 1986 stock price. In 2006 alone, payments totaling $1.14 a share were equal to 28 percent of the 1986 purchase price. And even this was not the end: Associated raised its dividend yet again in early 2007. If history is any indication, many more decades of steadily rising payments lie ahead.
