Learn the stock market › Dividends › Lesson 2 of 5
Dividend yield
How to calculate it
Dividend yield = dividends per share over a year / share price.
Exxon Mobil paid $4.12 per share over the last 12 months. At a price of $165.87 that is $4.12 / $165.87 = 2.5%. Someone buying $10,000 of the stock would receive about 2.5% of that a year in dividends, if the dividend stays the same.
The largest US companies
Under each company: dividends over the last 12 months divided by the price on Nov 6, 2026. The table is in alphabetical order.
| Company | Dividend yield |
|---|---|
| Alphabet $0.86 / $284.78 | 0.3% |
| Apple $1.06 / $342.37 | 0.3% |
| Broadcom $2.60 / $293.69 | 0.9% |
| Costco $5.71 / $1,053.56 | 0.5% |
| Eli Lilly $6.69 / $1,354.00 | 0.5% |
| Exxon Mobil $4.12 / $165.87 | 2.5% |
| JPMorgan Chase $6.15 / $334.49 | 1.8% |
| Mastercard $3.48 / $652.70 | 0.5% |
| Meta $2.10 / $610.15 | 0.3% |
| Microsoft $3.64 / $530.61 | 0.7% |
| Nvidia $0.52 / $186.64 | 0.3% |
| Oracle $2.00 / $116.10 | 1.7% |
| Visa $2.68 / $422.65 | 0.6% |
| Walmart $0.98 / $125.52 | 0.8% |
The yields run from 0.3% to 2.5%. Large US companies tend to pay low yields, because many return more cash through buybacks than through dividends.
Six of the 20 paid no dividend and are not in the table: Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, Netflix, Palantir and AMD.
Trailing or forward
The table counts what was actually paid over 12 months. The highest, Exxon Mobil at 2.5%, is built from everything the company paid. Other sites often use the latest quarterly dividend times four, or an estimate of next year, so the same stock can show different yields in different places.
A special dividend is not likely to come back. Check what a yield is built on before you compare two of them.
When the price falls, the yield rises
Dividend yield changes every day, because the price does. If Exxon Mobil fell 20% to $132.70 and paid the same dividend, its yield would rise from 2.5% to 3.1%, without the company paying a cent more.
A high yield can therefore mean the price has fallen because the market expects a cut. How often a high yield has been followed by a lower dividend is in When are dividends cut?
Only part of the return
The yield is what you receive in cash. The price moves on top of it, up or down. How much dividends have added to the market over the long run is in the study How much does the stock market go up on average?, and the dividend calculator works out what a number of shares has paid.
Test yourself
A stock costs $50 and pays $2 a year. The price falls to $40 and the dividend stays. What is the yield now?
How the stock moved: Why did Exxon Mobil move?