CAT Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate (CAGR)
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.5% | $6.07 | $66.00 | 0.5% | $66.00 | $15,829 | 13.19 |
| 2 | 0.4% | $6.56 | $86.60 | 0.6% | $152.60 | $23,453 | 14.99 |
| 3 | 0.3% | $7.09 | $106.37 | 0.6% | $258.97 | $33,414 | 16.38 |
| 4 | 0.3% | $7.67 | $125.63 | 0.6% | $384.60 | $46,424 | 17.46 |
| 5 | 0.2% | $8.29 | $144.69 | 0.7% | $529.28 | $63,408 | 18.29 |
| 6 | 0.2% | $8.96 | $163.82 | 0.7% | $693.10 | $85,574 | 18.93 |
| 7 | 0.2% | $9.68 | $183.27 | 0.7% | $876.37 | $114,495 | 19.43 |
| 8 | 0.1% | $10.46 | $203.27 | 0.7% | $1,080 | $152,225 | 19.81 |
| 9 | 0.1% | $11.31 | $224.03 | 0.7% | $1,304 | $201,441 | 20.11 |
| 10 | 0.1% | $12.22 | $245.75 | 0.7% | $1,549 | $265,633 | 20.34 |
Year 1-10 dividend income (preview)
Based on a $10,000 initial investment with $200.00 monthly contributions, DRIP on.
Historical dividends per share
Recent dividends
| Ex-date | Cash amount | TTM yield | Fwd yield | Share price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-20 | $1.51 | 0.9% | 0.8% | $798.40 |
| 2026-01-20 | $1.51 | 1.2% | 1.0% | $629.00 |
| 2025-10-20 | $1.51 | 1.4% | 1.1% | $531.18 |
| 2025-07-21 | $1.51 | 1.7% | 1.5% | $410.07 |
| 2025-04-21 | $1.41 | 2.0% | 2.0% | $284.74 |
| 2025-01-21 | $1.41 | 1.4% | 1.4% | $398.36 |
| 2024-10-21 | $1.41 | 1.4% | 1.4% | $390.48 |
| 2024-07-22 | $1.41 | 1.5% | 1.6% | $347.87 |
| 2024-04-19 | $1.30 | 1.8% | 1.5% | $354.66 |
| 2024-01-19 | $1.30 | 1.8% | 1.8% | $285.28 |
| 2023-10-20 | $1.30 | 2.5% | 2.1% | $249.20 |
| 2023-07-19 | $1.30 | 1.9% | 2.0% | $262.75 |
Source: Polygon.io. Last 12 dividend distributions, most recent first. TTM yield = sum of last 12 months of payments ÷ share price on ex-date. Forward yield = this payment × detected payout frequency ÷ share price on ex-date.
About CAT
Caterpillar Inc. — ticker CAT — is the largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment in the world and one of the longest-running dividend growers in US industrials. Caterpillar has raised its dividend in each of the last thirty-plus consecutive years, qualifying it for the Dividend Aristocrat bracket reserved for S&P 500 constituents with twenty-five-plus-year streaks. The streak is the more remarkable for what it has survived: Caterpillar's earnings are among the most cyclical in the entire US large-cap universe, swinging materially with the global construction and mining capex cycle, and the dividend has nonetheless been raised through every one of those cycles since the early 1990s. Through the 2008-09 financial crisis, when construction demand fell off a cliff and Caterpillar's quarterly earnings turned negative for a stretch, the annual-increase cadence held. Through the 2014-16 commodity downturn, when mining capex collapsed and Caterpillar's resource-industries segment took a multi-year hit, the cadence held. That track record across genuinely severe cyclical pressure is what makes Caterpillar a premium-grade industrial dividend payer rather than a typical cyclical that flexes the dividend with the cycle.
Caterpillar operates in the Industrials sector, specifically heavy machinery for construction, mining, and energy applications. The business is organized into three primary segments: Construction Industries (excavators, wheel loaders, articulated trucks, and other equipment sold to construction contractors globally), Resource Industries (large mining trucks, surface and underground mining equipment, and ancillary technology sold to global mining operators), and Energy & Transportation (reciprocating engines and turbines for oil-and-gas, power generation, marine, and rail applications). The fourth source of cash flow, Caterpillar Financial Services, finances customer equipment purchases and contributes a smaller but meaningful share of operating earnings. The three operating segments are each cyclical, but they cycle on partially independent drivers — global construction activity, mining capex, and energy infrastructure investment — so the consolidated earnings line is somewhat smoothed even though every individual segment is cyclical.
The dividend mandate has been embedded in Caterpillar's capital-allocation policy long enough that it functions as a structural commitment, supported by the long-run free-cash-flow capacity of the equipment business and by the financial services arm. Management's stated capital plan prioritizes maintaining and growing the dividend, funding internal R&D and modernization capex, and returning surplus cash through share repurchases as the cyclical-up windows produce excess cash. Caterpillar maintains an investment-grade credit profile (A-rated), supported by the recurring service-and-parts revenue stream that runs alongside the cyclical equipment-sales line. Expense ratio is not applicable to individual stocks — the figure you'll see in the calculator above is zero, since there is no fund wrapper between you and the underlying shares. The dividend has not been cut in Caterpillar's modern public-company history.
How CAT pays dividends
Caterpillar pays cash dividends quarterly, on a February–May–August–November cadence. The board declares the per-share amount each quarter; the ex-dividend date typically falls in the third or fourth week of the second month of each quarter, and the pay date falls roughly two to three weeks after the ex-date. Holders who own shares as of the close on the day before the ex-date receive the dividend; holders who buy on or after the ex-date wait for the next quarterly payment. On the ex-date the share price drops by approximately the distribution amount on the open, reflecting the fact that the company has paid the cash out of its balance sheet.
Holders who DRIP through their broker receive additional shares purchased at the prevailing market price around the pay date. Most major brokers offer fractional-share DRIP for Caterpillar, so the full cash distribution is reinvested even when the per-share amount divided by the share price doesn't produce a whole number. The mechanics are identical to any other quarterly US dividend stock — there is no managed-distribution policy, no covered-call overlay, and the cash that funds the dividend comes from operating free cash flow generated by the three operating segments and the financial services arm combined.
Recent growth pattern: Caterpillar has typically raised the quarterly per-share amount once per year, with the new rate taking effect on the August payment following the mid-year announcement. The size of the annual hike has historically run in the mid-to-high single digits, with occasional larger raises in particularly strong cyclical-up windows. The five-year trailing dividend growth rate has run in the high single digits — moderately ahead of the typical mature industrial Aristocrat. The calculator on this page uses a recent dividend growth rate to project the income line forward; given the cyclical nature of Caterpillar's earnings base, modeling with a growth assumption near the long-run average rather than the most recent cyclical-up figure is generally more honest for a multi-year projection.
Caterpillar's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate in taxable accounts, given the standard sixty-day holding-period rule. Most buy-and-hold investors clear this threshold easily. In tax-advantaged accounts the qualified-dividend treatment is moot because no current-year tax applies.
Who CAT suits
Caterpillar suits investors who want a long-streak Dividend Aristocrat exposure to global construction and mining capex without flexing the income line through the cycle, and who accept that the underlying share price moves materially with cyclical sentiment around global capex. The yield typically sits in the one-and-a-half-to-two-percent range — modestly below the broader S&P 500 average and well below the higher-yield industrial peers. The low yield is not generosity-driven; it reflects the fact that Caterpillar's share price has compounded faster than its per-share dividend over the post-2016 cyclical-up window, particularly through the post-2020 infrastructure-spending and mining-capex recovery. The trade-off is the canonical low-yield-quality-grower pattern in an industrial cyclical: a small current cash payment in exchange for a thirty-plus-year streak signal and participation in the global capex cycle on the upside.
The comparison readers most often want is CAT versus Deere (DE) — the two large US heavy-equipment names with long dividend records, where Caterpillar's exposure is construction and mining while Deere's is agriculture and lawn-care equipment. Both have raised dividends through multiple cycles, both maintain investment-grade credit profiles, and both yield in similar ranges. The substantive difference is the cyclical driver: Caterpillar's earnings track global construction and mining capex, while Deere's earnings track US and global agricultural-commodity prices and the related farm-equipment replacement cycle. An investor seeking diversified industrial-cyclical exposure can hold both for non-overlapping cyclical drivers. Against the higher-yield industrial peers — MMM (with its 2024 dividend cut history), GE, EMR — Caterpillar's distinctive feature is the intact long-streak record at premium quality.
In taxable accounts, Caterpillar's dividends benefit from qualified-dividend treatment. In tax-advantaged accounts the treatment is moot. As with any single-stock position, this content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold Caterpillar, and individual circumstances vary. Industrial-cyclical-specific risks — including the global construction and mining capex cycle, commodity-price exposure through the resource-industries segment, foreign-currency translation effects on international revenue, and the long-run path of global infrastructure investment — should be weighed against the thirty-plus-year dividend continuity record.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested in Caterpillar ten years ago
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of Caterpillar stock ten years ago, held through to the present with quarterly dividends reinvested via DRIP. The ten-year window is informative for Caterpillar specifically because it spans a complete cyclical cycle — the 2014-16 mining-capex downturn at the start of the window, the post-2016 cyclical recovery, the COVID-19 demand shock and rebound, and the post-2021 infrastructure-spending and resource-demand window. Caterpillar's annual-increase cadence held across the entire cycle: each year saw one annual hike, with the new rate taking effect on the August payment, even through the 2015-16 period when mining-segment revenue collapsed and consolidated earnings were under acute pressure.
Three structural forces operate over the holding window. First, the per-share dividend grew each year at a mid-to-high-single-digit pace, with larger raises in the strong cash-flow windows of 2018, 2022, and 2023. Second, the share count grew as DRIP reinvested every quarterly distribution; given Caterpillar's modest entry yield, DRIP contributed a smaller share of total share-count growth than at higher-yield names, but the long compounding window meaningfully built the position. Third, the share price moved with the global capex cycle — appreciation through the late-2010s recovery, pullbacks in the late-2018 trade-cycle window and the early-2020 COVID shock, and a sustained recovery through the post-2021 infrastructure-spending window. The DRIP component therefore reinvested at a wide range of prices across the cycle — the cyclical pattern works as the buyer's friend on the down legs and as the buyer's tailwind on the up legs.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure. The structural point is that Caterpillar's long-streak record gave the holder confidence that the annual increase would continue through both the cyclical-down 2014-16 stretch and the cyclical-up post-2021 window, which is the central feature that distinguishes a premium-grade industrial Aristocrat from a typical cyclical that flexes the dividend with the cycle. This is offered as a structural illustration of how a cyclical-but-disciplined-dividend position compounds on DRIP, not as a forecast of future returns.
Scenario 2: $50,000 today plus $500/month for 20 years
Consider a hypothetical accumulation strategy in Caterpillar: $50,000 starting capital, plus $500 per month added on a regular cadence for 20 years. The calculator on this page can model this exactly — set Initial investment to $50,000, Extra contribution to $500, Contribution frequency to Monthly, time horizon to 20 years, and leave DRIP on. Use a moderate dividend growth assumption — mid single digits — closer to the long-run cycle-averaged pace than to the most recent cyclical-up trailing figure, because a 20-year window will contain multiple cyclical-down stretches when annual hike sizes are likely to be more modest.
The mechanics: each month, the new $500 buys additional shares at the current price, which adds to the share count and therefore to next quarter's dividend. Each quarter, the dividend received from all accumulated shares is reinvested, adding more shares at the prevailing price. Because Caterpillar's entry yield is modest — typically one-and-a-half to two percent — the DCA contribution component dominates share-count growth in the early years, with DRIP contributing more materially after the position has built up over the first decade. The cyclical pattern is particularly useful for a DCA strategy: monthly contributions during cyclical-down windows buy more shares per dollar at lower prices, which is the structurally favorable feature of regular dollar-cost averaging into a cyclical name.
What's worth focusing on in the calculator is how sensitive the projection is to the dividend growth assumption. With 4% per-share growth, the income line grows mostly through share-count expansion from contributions and DRIP. With a 7% per-share growth assumption — consistent with Caterpillar's long-run trailing average — the income line grows along two axes simultaneously and reaches a higher terminal value. Modeling Caterpillar with a growth assumption inside that range is reasonable, with a more conservative figure capturing the risk that a future cyclical-down window produces several years of more modest hikes. Real outcomes depend on Caterpillar's free-cash-flow generation across the global capex cycle, the path of mining and construction demand, tax treatment in your specific account, and the broader path of US equity markets. Educational only; not a forecast.
Sources & methodology
Dividend history and price data come from Polygon.io's reference and aggregates endpoints. Forward yield is computed as the sum of the most recent four cash distributions divided by the previous-close share price. The dividend growth rate shown on this page is the compound annual growth rate of total annual distributions across the available history in this snapshot.
Last updated: 2026-05-15.
Information here is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past dividend history does not guarantee future payments. Verify all figures with the issuer or a registered financial advisor before making investment decisions.