Investors may cherish dividend stocks, which provide a regular stream of income that allows you to realize regular profits along the way without having to sell your stock. But they get twitchy around companies initiating a dividend - some argue that starting a new payout is an admission by management that the company's best growth days are behind it.

Sonia Joao, President of Houston-based RIA Robertson Wealth Management, disagrees. "Paying a dividend doesn't suggest slower growth ahead," she says. "If anything, it's the exact opposite. Precisely because the company expects durable growth, they're more willing to part with their cash."

This isn't just academic. Dividend stocks have been proven to outperform their non-paying peers over time. Analysis from Ned Davis Research showed that the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, equally weighted so each stock has the same influence, enjoyed a compound annual growth rate of 7.70% from 1972 to 2017. Breaking the index down yielded very different results. The dividend payers collectively enjoyed returns of 9.25% per year, while the non-payers lagged with returns of just 2.61%.

Even better, stocks that initiated or grew their dividends fared best of all, enjoying compound annual returns of 10.07% per year.

Here are 20 dividend stocks that have initiated a new payout within the past five years. Their yields range widely, from below 1% to above 8%. But all have made a commitment to start rewarding their patient shareholders with a regular cash payout.

eBay

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Let's start with one of the darlings of the 1990s internet boom: online auction and payments pioneer eBay (EBAY, $36.72). Fully 24 years after its start as a public company, eBay is growing up and becoming a dividend payer.

Ebay declared its very first dividend earlier this year at 14 cents per share. The stock went ex-dividend on Feb. 28 and made the payment to investors on March 20.

At current prices, that dividend works out to a modest yield of 1.5%, which is slightly below the 1.9% sported by the S&P 500. But aggressive dividend growth is certainly feasible. At current levels, eBay is paying out only 22% of its profits in dividends.

In some ways, eBay has been something of an also-ran in the internet commerce world it helped to create. Most of the attention these days goes to Amazon.com (AMZN), Alibaba (BABA) and others. But eBay has been quietly growing its business, and revenues per share have risen by 54% since 2015 and the company's spinoff of payments company PayPal (PYPL).

Ebay may not be as exciting as a), Twitter () or Snap (). But the company has proven itself to be durable, and at long last, shareholder-friendly.