Investing in dividend-paying stocks is a great way to build long-term wealth. Below, you’ll find introductory information about dividend stocks. In later sections, we will cover more advanced topics, such as dividend yield and dividend reinvestment programs.

How Do Dividends Work?

In essence, you receive a piece of the company’s profits for each share of a dividend stock you own. You are compensated just by holding the stock!

Let’s suppose, for instance, that Company X pays a 20 cent per share annual dividend. The majority of businesses give shareholders a cheque for 1/4 of 20 cents (or 5 cents) for each share they own four times a year, or quarterly (four times a year). This may not seem like much, but if you have thousands of shares in your portfolio and utilize the dividends to buy additional stock in the firm, you may accumulate a sizable amount of wealth over time. To reinvest those is the key.?Cash Returns

Regular cash dividends are sums of money sent to a company’s owners from its earnings (i.e., the shareholders). Before any money is distributed to the owners of common stock, a corporation that has issued preferred stock must pay the dividend on those shares.

One-Time Special Dividends

A corporation occasionally pays special one-time dividends in addition to regular payouts. These are uncommon and can happen for a number of reasons, including a significant legal victory, the sale of a firm, or the liquidation of an investment. Dividends in the form of money, stocks, or real estate are all possible.

When Do Dividends Get Paid?

• Declaration date: The day when the Board of Directors makes public their decision to declare a dividend is referred to as the declaration date. This is the day when the firm records a liability on its books, which means that it is now indebted to the investors for the amount of money. On the day that the declaration is made, the Board will also make announcements on the date of record and the date of payment.
• Date of record: The date of record is the day on which a business analyses its records to identify precisely who its shareholders are. In order to be eligible for a dividend payment, an investor has to be listed as a “holder of record” on the firm’s books by the date of record. It is nearly typically the second business day before the record date that a stock will begin trading without the right to receive a dividend (also known as “ex-rights”). To put it another way, the dividend will only be distributed to those individuals who were the owners of the shares on or before the ex-dividend date. If you acquired Coca-Cola shares on or after the ex-dividend date, you will not be eligible to receive the company’s next dividend payment. Instead, the investor from whom you purchased your shares will be eligible to receive the dividend payment.
• Ex-dividend Date: For investors interested in dividends, the day on which a company is considered to be trading “ex-dividend” is the single most crucial date. An investor has to acquire shares of a company before the ex-dividend date in order to be eligible to collect the forthcoming dividend for that stock.
• Payment date: This is the day on which the real dividend payment will be made to the shareholders of the firm.

The Ex-Dividend Date Search tool enables investors to monitor equities that are expected to begin trading without the benefit of a dividend within a specified date range. When it comes to dividend investing, the ex-dividend date is a date that bears a great deal of significance. This is because in order to be eligible to collect a company’s subsequent dividend, you need to possess the company’s shares before the ex-dividend date. Take a look at the snapshot that follows to see the results of the search for equities that will be going ex-dividend on October 30, 2018.

How Often are Dividends Paid?

The majority of firms pay their dividends on a quarterly basis, four times a year, while others pay them semi-annually (twice a year), yearly (once a year), monthly, or, less often, without any established schedule at all (referred to as “irregular” dividends).

There are no “written in stone” regulations governing the frequency of dividend distributions, particularly for American equities. In other words, companies are allowed to establish their own payout guidelines for the volume and timing of their payouts. Having said that, it is customary for the majority of ordinary businesses to distribute dividends to their shareholders on a quarterly basis, in accordance with the law’s requirement that earnings be reported on a quarterly basis. In the end, the choice of how to 

What Exactly is a Stock Dividend?

An equitable distribution of extra shares of a company’s stock to holders of its common stock is known as a stock dividend. In other words, when a corporation announces a stock dividend as opposed to a cash dividend, you will get extra shares of stock. A firm may decide to pay out stock dividends for a variety of reasons, such as having insufficient cash on hand or wanting to reduce the stock’s price per share to encourage more trading and boost liquidity. Stock dividends are often referred to as “stock splits”.

Companies offer dividends as a method to thank stockholders for their ownership, typically in the form of cash payments.

Companies often distribute cash dividends on a regular basis (often quarterly). They may decide on occasion to give a one-time dividend as well.

Another sort of payment that uses additional shares of stock rather than cash is a stock dividend. These also go by the name “stock splits.”

Visit our Best Dividend Stocks List to see the stocks that Dividend.com highly recommends. The list includes the best dividend stocks according to Dividend.com and is intended for long-term, buy-and-hold investors. The Dividend Advantage Rating System (DARSTM), developed exclusively by Dividend.com, was used to rate each stock on this list. Refer to the screenshot of our incomplete list below, which is updated every week.

Key Lessons in This Chapter