3 Passive Income Stocks to Hold for the Next 20 Years | The Motley Fool (2024)

Are you on the hunt for above-average dividend income right now that will also persist -- and grow reliably -- into the distant future? Not every single dividend-paying name promises it all. But there's a handful of dividend stocks to buy that do offer such a proverbial package.

Here's a rundown of three of your best such bets right now. See if you spot the common theme among all three of them.

1. Kraft Heinz

You're probably familiar with Kraft brand cheeses and Heinz 57's ketchup. However, Kraft Heinz (KHC -0.13%) is so much more than toppings and condiments these days. Oscar Meyer bologna, Capri Sun drinks, Lunchables, Maxwell House coffee, Kool-Aid, and Jell-O are just some of the other well-known brands in the Kraft Heinz family.

This is no minor detail for a couple of reasons. The sheer size and scale this creates is one such reason. Not only does the $45 billion company enjoy significant operating leverage, but it also enjoys sales leverage with its consumer staples retailer partners.

The other reason this matters? These are all iconic brand names that people often simply buy out of habit rather than doing any real comparative shopping. It's easier to remain a leading name than it is to displace a market leader. To this end, data from QuestBrand indicates Kraft Heinz still regularly rates as a top-20 brand for value, even among Gen Z buyers who are relatively willing to consider products other than the ones their parents bought. Its brand names appear to have plenty of marketability left despite their age.

That's important for a company as serious about its dividend as Kraft Heinz is -- there's always reliable revenue coming in, backed by brand-driven pricing power. While we may never see significant sales or earnings growth here, we will see consistent earnings growth that in turn supports consistent long-term dividend growth. Newcomers will be stepping in while the stock's dividend yield stands at a healthy 4.3%.

2. Coca-Cola

Just as you've heard of Kraft, Heinz, and most of The Kraft Heinz Company's other brands, you're also almost certainly familiar with Coca-Cola (KO 0.35%). As is the case with so many of its consumer goods peers, though, the company isn't just its namesake cola.

The beverage giant also owns Dasani water, Gold Peak tea, Minute Maid juices, Powerade sports drinks, and several others. Like Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola's always got something to sell to a wide range of customers. The resulting reliable revenue stream is a key reason why the company's been able to raise its annual dividend payment for an incredible 61 years in a row now.

Astute investors will know that the business environment is changing for all companies. Operating costs are forever on the rise, and technology is empowering customers while also forcing organizations to become ever more price-competitive. This is at least an indirect threat to dividends. Beverage behemoths aren't immune to this dynamic either.

However, there's something about Coca-Cola as a company that sidesteps much of this cost-based and pricing-based risk that you may not know. That is, it probably didn't bottle the Coca-Cola-branded beverage you regularly enjoy.

It used to, to be clear. But between 2013 and 2017, it sold the bulk of its U.S. bottling operations back to local owners so it could better focus on what it does best. Its current business model is instead mostly selling branded concentrate to bottlers, who then turn it into a bottled or packaged beverage and deliver it to retailers where it's passed along to customers. Although this approach may mean less revenue is now collected, it also means more profits are generated, since the bulk of operating-cost and production-cost risks are offloaded to the bottlers themselves.

KO Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

This model is ideally suited for recurring cash flow that drives dividends. Coca-Cola just needs to continue marketing and promoting its goods, which it's more than proven it can do.

3. Procter & Gamble

Last but not least, add Procter & Gamble (PG 0.33%) to your list of passive income stocks you can feel good about stepping into for the next 20 years (or more).

Yes, it's another consumer staples stock. There's a reason these companies make for such reliable dividend-paying tickers. That is, these companies make products that are perpetually in demand regardless of the economic environment. People are always going to eat, drink, and clean their clothes, their homes, and themselves, regardless of the cost of doing so.

Procter & Gamble is the parent company for products including Tide detergent, Charmin toilet paper, Gillette razors, Dawn dishwashing liquid, and Pampers diapers, just to name a few. These are well-known household names. Indeed, market research outfit BrandSpark reports that P&G's products easily led 2023's ranking of America's most trusted consumer products, while many of its product lines are regular category market-share leaders. And it does about as well overseas as it does domestically.

That's neither luck nor coincidence. It's largely the result of the company's sheer size, which allows it to regularly out-advertise any competition. Procter & Gamble is often the world's single-biggest advertiser, in fact, according to annual data compiled by AdAge. The deep pockets linked to its sheer size also mean P&G can afford to out-innovate its competitors. In this vein, seven of the top 25 non-food products Circana ranked as 2022's New-Product Pacesetters were created by Procter & Gamble, including items like its Dawn Ultra's EZ-squeeze bottle and its Febreze Unstopables Touch touch-activated room air freshener.

These details may not seem game-changing on the surface, and the company's massive size could even be viewed as a liability rather than an asset. But these nuances bring more net upside than downside to the table.

More importantly for interested investors, these seemingly small things are actually a big part of why Procter & Gamble has been able to raise its annual dividend payment every year for the past 37 years. Its current yield of 2.5% may not be thrilling, but it's at least growing, and generally outgrowing inflation.