Realty Income (O) is one of the best Dividend stocks you can buy. The real estate investment trust (REIT) has a long track record of paying and raising its dividend, which is reliable and high-yielding. Let's see how much the company is going to pay out in dividends this year.
Monthly payments add up
Even though Realty Income is a top REIT, it stands out among other great dividend payers because it's one of the few stocks that pays monthly. It has paid a dividend for 650 consecutive months and raised it 107 consecutive times quarterly. At the current price, the dividend yield is 5.1%, or nearly four times the average S&P 500 yield.
As a REIT, Realty Income is structured in a specific way that requires paying at least 90% of its income as dividends. For any other company, the dividend payout is up to management, although a classic dividend stock, like Coca-Cola, tends to keep the payout ratio pretty high at around 75%.
A REIT is more complicated than a standard stock, and its profitability is more typically measured by funds from operations (FFO), and even more commonly by the adjusted version, than by net income. You'll often see a REIT's payout ratio go way above 90% because it uses the FFO as an earnings landmark, and FFO accounts for more cash transactions. Over the trailing 12 months, Realty Income's payout ratio was 287%, and the company paid $2.4 billion in dividends.
Realty Income currently pays a dividend of $0.26 per share monthly, which works out to $3.16 annually, but it's already increased it four times in 2024. It paid $2.1 billion in total dividends in 2023, or $30 million more than the year before. There's no guarantee, but it's reasonable to expect further increases by the end of the year.
