Dow Jones & Co. today announced that Bank of America Corp. and Chevron Corp. will replace Altria Group Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. in its benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average effective February 19.

The change is the first in four years and reflects the index’s continued shift away from industrial firms and into other sectors such as energy and financial services.

Excluding thinly traded Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Bank of America and Chevron are the two biggest U.S. companies by market capitalization that currently aren’t in the Dow industrials.

Altria will be dropping out just over a month before the tobacco giant splits off its larger international operations.

“The catalyst for these changes is the restructuring in progress at Altria, which will result in a much smaller and more narrowly focused company,” stated Marcus Brauchli, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. The Journal’s top news editor oversees the makeup of “The Dow,” which Charles H. Dow created as a 12-stock index in May 1896.

The last change to the Dow industrials happened in April 2004, when American International Group Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. were added. Dropped were AT&T Corp., which returned as a component in November 2005 after SBC Communications Inc. bought the company and renamed itself AT&T Inc., Eastman Kodak Co. and International Paper Co.

Altria has been in the Dow industrials since Oct. 30, 1985, when the company was Philip Morris Cos.

Honeywell is being dropped because it is the smallest of the industrials in terms of revenue and earnings.