The bottom line is that owners of a company should be indifferent to whether they get their return via appreciation in the share price or receiving a portion of the profits.
They do so by figuring out for all their candidates an "equity risk premium"--the amount of return(appreciation plus dividends) they want over safe ten-year Treasury bonds, based on their best guess.
The best of the bunch has been Exelon (nyse: EXC - news - people ) (60), which enjoyed a 20.4% annual return (price appreciation plus dividends) from 1998 through 2002, versus the industry's 2.6% average.