Consumer stocks are the new dividend kings according to two new exchange-traded funds that use artificial intelligence to predict which U.S. and Canadian companies will boost their payouts the fastest. Bristol Gate Capital Partners Inc., a Toronto-based firm with about C$1.1 billion ($850 million) under management, developed a platform to forecast dividend growth that's evolved in the past decade from a "souped-up Excel model" to a machine-learning algorithm supplemented by fundamental analysis, said President Michael Capombassis. The algorithm looks at roughly 500 factors to determine what drove dividend growth over the past 20 years and to predict what companies will exhibit those factors in the coming 12 months. Bristol Gate's portfolio managers then apply fundamental analysis to choose the funds' holdings from the model's recommendations. "The core theme behind our strategy, and this is backed up by our research and by our testing, is that if we could identify the highest dividend-growth stocks in the market in the coming 12 months, and we broadly built a portfolio around those stocks, then over time we would outperform the market with lower downside risk," Capombassis said in an interview at the firm's offices.