In a rocky market, dividend stocks with generous yields and solid growth prospects may be just what your portfolio needs-if you can find them.

Investors are increasingly concerned about the stock market, given worries over the AI trade and rising bond yields. Dividends can provide a safety net, but with the market yielding just 1%, generous payouts are scarce.

To identify some attractive options, Barron's spoke with Christian Heck, deputy head of the global value team at First Eagle Investment Management.

Known for its focus on value with an international bent, First Eagle offers a number of top-performing income-oriented funds, including the First Eagle Global Balanced Fund and First Eagle US Fund. Starting in 2024, the company has also rolled out a suite of ETFs, offering investors another way to access its strategies.

Here are three of Heck's favorite picks.

Noble Corp. / NE

Year-to-date return: 70%

Dividend yield: 4.3%

Surging oil prices have benefitted energy stocks and offshore drilling contractor Noble is no exception. Shares of the company, which owns 36 floating and jackup oil rigs, have rallied 70% this year.

Heck thinks the stock, which still yields more than 4%, has further to run. Operating rigs is a boom-and-bust business, and the industry is still recovering from its last major crash that began in 2014. Years later, demand for deep water rigs is finally coming back, thanks to increased drilling off the coasts of Brazil, Guyana and West Africa.

That should position Noble well. Due to the industry's long hangover, rigs have been retired far faster than they have been built in the past decade. Growing demand should catch up to flat supply in the next few years, boosting margins for the few firms that operate extensive rig fleets, First Eagle believes.

"Nobody is building new rigs," says Heck. "As the market gets tighter, we're pretty much running out of capacity, we will see pricing step-ups."

Wall Street analysts forecast Noble's earnings per share to surge more than 250% in 2027 and another 50% in 2028. While the shares trade at more than 70 times this year's estimated profits, they trade at less than 14 times what the company is expected to earn in 2028.

Kesko Oyj / KKOYY

Year-to-date return: 15%

Dividend yield: 4.0%

Americans may not be familiar with Kesko, but it's a household name in Finland where it runs the nation's second-largest grocery chain and largest home improvement chain, and is one of the Nordic nation's leading car dealers.

Kesko's market share numbers are impressive. Heck estimates it has about 35% of Finland's grocery business and 50% of the home-improvement business. In a relatively small country of less than 6 million, such massive market share is necessary to gain effective scale, he notes. But the dominance also gives Kesko a giant advantage against local competitors that have trouble matching its operational efficiency.

"It's hard to compete with those guys," he says. "In every distribution business, scale matters."

About 10% of Kesko stores are in other Nordic and Northern European countries.

While Kesko's profit potential is constrained by the slow-growing Finnish economy, the company has proved adept at further boosting earnings by improving margins and gaining market share. Wall Street analysts project Kesko profits to grow 8% in 2026 and 14% in 2027. The stock, which trades at 19 times estimated 2026 earnings, also boasts a 4% dividend yield.

Becton Dickinson / BDX

Year-to-date return: 24%

Dividend yield: 2.2%

Becton Dickinson is another company that looms large in its niche-in this case medical supplies such as syringes, blood collection tubes and more. The stock, which yields 2.2%, has languished in recent years, although it's begun to rally.

Heck chalks much of the stock's recent struggles up to investors' bearishness on the healthcare sector in general and fears of a hostile political environment after vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., took over the Health and Human Services Department. Still, notes Heck, Becton, Dickinson doesn't face the same problems many pharmaceutical companies do, such as patent cliffs and drugs that boast eye-popping, politically contentious price tags.

He also points to the company's recent decision to spin off its lab equipment and diagnostics business, which then merged with Waters Corp. The deal raised $4 billion to fund buybacks and pay down debt, but led to uncertainty that hung over Becton Dickinson stock until it was completed in February.

Wall Street analysts forecast Becton Dickinson profits to surge 13% for the fiscal year that ends in September, although growth is expected to slow to around 5% to 6% in fiscal 2027 and 2028. Shares trade at about 14 times 2027 earnings.

Wall Street may still be underestimating the company, according to Heck. "It's been treated as a run-of-the-mill healthcare company, but it's more of a manufacturing business that dominates a few niches that are absolutely critical to the healthcare system," he says.