Top Wall Street analysts pick these dividend stocks for attractive returns

September had a bumpy start for investors as volatility jolted markets in the first week, but dividend-paying stocks can help smooth the ride.

Investors with a long-term investment horizon can ignore short-term noise to focus on stocks that have the potential to enhance their total portfolio returns through a mix of dividends and share price appreciation.

To that end, the recommendations of top Wall Street analysts can help investors choose stocks with strong fundamentals and the ability to pay consistent dividends.

Here are three dividend stocks, highlighted by Wall Street's top pros on TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on their past performance.

We start this week with MPLX (MPLX), a midstream energy player. The company's quarterly cash distribution was 85 cents per common unit ($3.40 on an annualized basis) for the second quarter of 2024. MPLX offers an attractive yield of nearly 8%.

Recently, RBC Capital analyst Elvira Scotto reiterated a buy rating on MPLX stock with a price target of $47. The analyst updated her model to reflect the company's solid second-quarter results, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization surpassing the Street's estimate by 3%.

Scotto raised her adjusted EBITDA estimates for 2024 and 2025 to reflect the strong performance of the Logistics & Storage segment in Q2 and some consolidation of joint venture interests. The analyst maintained her distribution per unit estimate of $3.57 for 2024 and $3.84 for 2025.

Scotto continues to view MPLX as "one of the most attractive income plays among large-cap MLP [master limited partnership]," thanks to its robust yield and rising free cash flow generation. The analyst thinks that MPLX's solid free cash flow will