Despite harsh criticism from Wall Street, Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald is unlikely to face a mass shareholder revolt at the company’s annual meeting today in downtown Cincinnati, thanks largely to the company’s recent performance, local experts say.

“Investors want to see results,” said Dan Kiley, CEO of Retirement Capital Advisors, which manages more than $500 million in retirement accounts for families of retired P&G employees, including many in the Dayton area. “What’s important to them is not just the stock price moving up but also an increase in dividend payments.”

P&G raised its quarterly dividend this year for the 56th consecutive year to 56.2 cents a share, and the consumer product giant’s stock price hit a 52-week high of $69.97 on Sept. 25. The company’s shares closed Monday at $69.10, down 53 cents.

That may offset P&G’s lackluster performance for most of the past year, in which the company reported a series of disappointing earnings results before beating analysts expectations in the fourth quarter.

Kiley gives much of the credit for the turnaround to activist investor Bill Ackman, whose hedge fund has acquired P&G shares worth about $2 billion.

Ackman has pressed for deeper cost cuts to remain competitive. To that end, P&G has announced it will eliminated 5,700 non-manufacturing positions by the end of 2013, including an unknown number in southwest Ohio.

“The things that are taking place at P&G today are much needed changes that are setting the company up for an opportunity to succeed in the next decade,” Kiley said. “The outside influence of Ackman really helped to speed up that process.”

Ackman initially called for McDonald to step down, but P&G’s board recently restated its support McDonald.

While P&G’s annual meeting will likely draw some protesters and at least a handful of disgruntled shareholders, Kiley expects the annual meeting essentially to be a non-event.

“The annual meeting itself is a little bit of a formality,” he said. “In many years past, they would open it up to investors and give them an opportunity to ask: Where is the plan? What’s taking place? Not anymore.”

Curvin Miller, a financial planner at Russell & Co. in Fairborn, expects the shareholders’ meeting to be more of a pep rally for the throngs of investors who hold P&G shares.

But he warns those investors not to get caught up in the euphoria, even if it’s for an iconic brand like P&G with a blue-chip track record dating back to the 1800s.

“People who hold very large positions in one stock tend to think past strong performance is going to continue,” Miller said. “But who knows what the next eternal force could be to affect a company’s revenues. Don’t over-hold a stock.”