Using the Best Dividends screen to find income opportunities

I recently used two of Stockopedia’s Guru screens to find growth stocks at reasonable prices. Today I’m switching focus and looking for good quality dividend stocks with reasonable valuations.
Stockopedia’s Guru Screens are preconfigured screens based on the methods of successful investors. You can find them using the browse tab on the left of the screen – the Income Investing screens are here.
The top-performing income screen is the Best Dividends Screen. At the time of writing it’s delivered a cumulative gain of 315% since inception:

This is equivalent to an annualised return of around 12% since inception, comfortably above the long-term average of c.7% from the UK market.
This chart shows the performance of the screen relative to the FTSE All-Share Index:

One point worth noting is that this figure excludes dividend income. At the time of writing the stocks in qualifying for the Best Dividend screen have an average yield of 4%.
Assuming the screen has provided a similar rate of income since its inception, would take the total return over 12 years to around 365%, equivalent to 13% annualised.